Who says the desert isn't green in the summer?

Just what I needed after a hard week at work, some R&R!

Haven't had any major storms in our area the last few days, but we have gotten the rain we desperately needed. Yet another round or thunderstorms surrounded us yesterday. Nothing major happened here, but to the northeast several reports of flash-flooding. Good for the road, yet at the same time, we could have used the deep soaking! That same double edge sword, either not enough rain, or too much at one time. Enjoy the pics... 

End of an era

Well, the time has come for these two to find a new home....

Solider Boy and Maddy enjoying lunch.

Luckily we found them a home were they won't be eaten... at least for a while ;) hey they're goats, food is what they are for! Seriously, a lady from work took them off our hands, they are going to use them as "lawn ornaments" and weed control. They may breed Maddy for milk and make cheese... don't laugh there's money there, and that's what we had thought about doing... just an example Goat Cheese and Roasted Red Pepper Quiche, 45-Piece Tray

Post storm clean up.

We've had a couple nice thunderstorms go through the are in the past few days, this being my day off, I get to fix the roads. Our driveway was so bad, I couldn't get the Kia out very well. It had rutted real bad on both sides, leaving nothing but soft ball size rocks behind. I filled the ruts with the rocks, and moved in a dozen loads of fill dirt with the Samurai dump truck.

The tractor smoothed it all out and now I have a much better driveway than before the storms hit! Just hope one doesn't come though and take all this hard work with it.

Our driveway post road work... 

This part wasn't as bad as the first, but still needed to be smoothed out a bit.

I took the opportunity to widen the main road a little today. 

Had to re-stack these blocks and fill it back in on the other side.

The road was only wide enough to get the Kia through on this part.

Most of the road damage was closer to home, but you can tell a lot of water flowed through here

Had to fill in a little here and there... 

There were a few places here and there were the road was washed away.

The video I posted earlier this week, this is the aftermath. 

The county just put up the barricades this morning.   

First ever video blog post!

The Drive Home

Living in the sticks is an adventure, and today is a prime example... When you look at these pictures realize that it has not rained here. This is all run off from the local mountains. This little road block made me double back, and go around the long way, taking a very rough, very dirt road to the house...

After all the excitement getting home, I was rewarded by sights like these...

This is my favorite time of the year for photos, nothing looks as cool as an Arizona Monsoon Sky!

Arizona Families for Home Education Convention In Phoenix #AFHE

I had posted this on my other blog last night, but I've made the decision to take the other blog down and just use this one. So here is a re-post on our weekend in Phoenix at the AFHE (Arizona Families for Home Education) Home school convention.

Last weekend we attended AFHE's convention in Phoenix Az. It is a yearly event for home schoolers in the great State of Arizona. We had attended four years ago and were blown away by the amount of people in attendance. This year was no different.

We did bring along our daughter this year, I wanted her to see that she was not alone in home schooling. We also wanted her opinion on curriculum. She has been a bit bored with the repetitiveness of the math she's been working on. She also wanted a different science and history. We had been using the PACE program from ACE (Accelerated Christian Education). It's a great curriculum if you are self motivated. I myself graduated from this curriculum, and we currently have family who are using it. We decided to stick with ACE for English, word building, and creative literature. Utilizing the Young Explorer Series for science, and BJU (Bob Jones University ) for Math.

Enough about curriculum. The convention was awesome. We only had a chance to catch the keynote speaker on Friday morning, Heidi St John. She was an engaging speaker, down to earth, well informed, and had a great stage presence. The wife really related to her presentation on home schooling. It was a perfect way to kick off the conference.

The rest of Friday was spent on the floor of the curriculum fair. We started on one side and walked every booth. Our little one was amazed at the sheer volume of material available for homeschooling. She was really into actively looking at the different items and publishers. She saw a lot she liked and a bit that she didn't. She wanted to go all online, but we are just not into that, give me a good ol' book to hold. We broke down though, and bought a game.

I won't try and give a synopsis of the game, but I will post a link to their site. I will say, that we love the game! The name is 'The Constitutional Quest'. Here's a video to give a little more info.

Not to get ahead of myself, but after we brought the game home, we played two rounds with the grandparents, and had a really good time. We all learned something.

Friday night we attended the Family night entertainment with John Branyan, Let me just say, this guy was funny... I mean really funny... I haven't laughed this hard in a long time, and too see both my wife and little one laughing at the same time, was even better! Here's a sample of his last set... The Three Little Pigs:

We had planned to attend a few more classes on Saturday, but got enthralled with the curriculum fair once again. We had made our minds up Friday night on what direction we were going to go into, then changed our minds at the last minute and went in another direction, but that's how it goes at the AFHE Convention. We had a great time, learned a lot from the vendors we spoke too, and have a new outlook on homeschooling.

This from the AFHE Facebook page... How large was the #AFHE conference last weekend? Try 5200! The Friday night family entertainment? 1500!