HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!!!!

Wishing all a safe and happy New Year!

May 2007 bring many blessings.

These are roses from our garden, photo taken with my new Canon Rebel Digital SLR camera, love it!

We are having a healthy baby....

GIRL!!!

We had our ultrasound yesterday and everything looks great. The baby showed us clearly that she not only did not have boy parts, but that she has girl parts. She is just the right size to date and my due date remains May 23rd.

Here is our newest little girl:

We had a wonderful Christmas with Mom, Dad, Ben, Becka and Dustin. Now it is time to relax for a few days before school starts again. The kids go back on the 3rd and I go back on the 8th, for my last semester!

I hope you all have a safe and wonderful new year.

Oh yeah, I will be posting some pictures taken with my new camera soon :)

Finished!!!!

Yeay!!! I turned in my last papers this afternoon! This semester is over and I have a 2 1/2 week break. Next semester is my last undergrad semester, graduation in May!

Looking forward to Mom, Dad and Ben being here and just relaxing.

Oh and we have our sonogram scheduled for December 27th. For a late Christmas present we'll get to see our new little one, and maybe find out what it is!

Mitch and I are going to his company holiday party for a little while tonight, lots of good food, and good drink (which I can't have any of this year :( )

I have a knitting picture to post. My very first knitting for the new baby:









Joseph took this picture of me knitting the other day when he was playing with the camera:







Not bad for a little guy :)

And here is Elisabeth at her Nutcracker show at school:









She's the one looking at the camera in the pink.

What can we give?

Check out Dan Zanes' Heifer Project video. His videos are on Disney channel in the morning, a crazy character, but good music. And supporting a geat cause here.

Almost done!!!

I have finished my finals and all that remains is to finish up a few loose ends on papers and turn them in tomorrow. The end is in sight :)

This cold I got has caused me to lose my voice, as of yesterday I was voiceless. I tried to work today, but it is kinda hard to answer phones without a voice, so they let me go home. So I got to study and work on papers a little.

Joseph had his holiday performance tonight, very cute.

Well, it's getting late so I'm gonna go. I will update more this weekend.

Finals week....

The semester is almost over, classes are finished and only papers and finals remain. My two finals are on Thursday and I have a few papers due this week, so I am busy working on those.

The kids went to Disney with Grandma this weekend and had a blast. Mitch and I enjoyed some time to ourselves for the first time in a long time. Of course this weekend when I finally was able to slow down, the wonderful cold the kids have been passing around finally caught up with me.

I will post more later this week, including some knitting pictures.

What kind of American Accent do you have?

I've seen this on a few other blogs and thought it would be a fun way to procrastinate....um...I mean pass the time.

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
The Inland North
The West
The Northeast
Philadelphia
Boston
North Central
The South
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

Classes are almost done for the semester. I promise to write more this weekend when I have a little more time.

So much to be thankful for...

The health of my family...

A wonderful husband who supports me in all I do...

My sister close by...I love being able to spend time with her...

A new life joining us in May...

The near end of my undergraduate studies, 10 years in the making...

My church family, their support and love is so wonderful...

Having a house to come home to, food to eat and jobs to support us...

There are so many things in our lives which we are greatful for, it is impossible to list them all...

May you all have a blessed day, remembering everything you have to be thankful for...

Most recent knitting

Here is a picture of the most recent project I completed for the family at the chinese restaurant we go to, they recently had their second child, a boy. This is the kimono, bib and burp cloth from Mason Dixon Knitting. They are all made with Sugar & Cream cotton yarn.

I am working on figuring out how to make a slide show of the pictures from our camping trip, as soon as I get it I will post them too.

I really am a bad blogger...

I have had news to update for a while, I just haven't sat down to do it yet. I also have pictures, but I need to find batteries for the camera, so those will have to wait.

Well, classes are going well...it's hard to believe the semester is already halfway over. I get to register for spring semester at the end of this month, my last semester of undergrad! Time flies! Elisabeth is doing wonderfully in school, her grades are improving on her math and science tests and we're all getting used to the schedule of things. She gets her first report card later this month, they are on a 9 weeks schedule. Joseph loves Baby Gator, his teachers are great and his little group of buddies is so cute.

I started working about 13 hours a week at Hillel (the Jewish student center). I'm working reception, answering phones and opening the door, not terribly demanding and I even get down time to work on homework or read (or knit).

In other news...we are expecting our third child. My due date is May 23rd. We are very excited and so are the kids. Joseph began telling everyone he knew as soon as we told him. Elisabeth hasn't had a very strong reaction, so it is hard to tell how she feels.

I have been feeling pretty good, except for the morning sickness that hit me this week, and that is fine as long as I eat some crackers before I get out of bed, and eat pretty much every two hours during the day. My clothes are already starting to get tight (I've gained 5 pounds, pretty good for 8 weeks).

So that's the last few months of our lives in a nutshell :) I promise pictures next time.

Recent projects

Well the week has gone well. My classes are off to a great start...tons of reading to do, but it will be interesting. Joseph has done well this week at Baby Gator and Elisabeth is continuing on a great course at Norton.

We had a baby shower this weekend at church and although I didn't stay (family time prempts a baby shower for someone I don't know) I did make a cute gift for the new baby. I wanted to share what I did.

I made a diaper "cake", this is such a fun easy thing to do. I was given one when Elisabeth was born, and I just think it is so cute.

Also, I made a pair of baby socks. I used this pattern, they are done in Knitpicks Dancing yarn (Swing colorway, which is no longer available, unfortunately) on US size 1 (2.25 mm) needles. The pattern is very well written and wonderfully quick to knit. Here they are next to my coffee cup for scale...so cute! Also, I placed them on top of the "cake" for gifting.

That's it for now...oh yeah, keep your eyes on the tropics, we may be bracing for a storm this week.

OK off to read some more 18th century British lit :)

Weeks one and two of school...

Elisabeth had an awesome first week of school. She seems to be adapting well to the school environment. She has been exhausted when she gets home and quite a challenge with her temperment, but hopefully it will level out as we get more into this routine.

Joseph started his new preschool today, Baby Gator, on UF campus. Hopefully his day is going well, I'm sure it is :)

On Wednesday, I start my fall classes, 15 credits. I'm taking English lit (Age of Dryden and Pope), Commercial French, French Lit (Intro to Realism and Naturalism), Social Foundations of Education and German 2. A full schedule, but I think it will be very interesting. I've also picked up a ballet class on Monday evenings, it's wonderful to be back in dance, painful, but wonderful and refreshing.

So we're off to a busy start to our school year here. Elisabeth's Brownie troop starts up again next Wednesday, and so does choir for Mitch, so we will be on our full schedule next week.

These are pictures of the kids enjoying some ice cream in Orlando...I think they were taken in July.

Summer is over...

Wow! These last six weeks went by fast. I was busy with 2 classes (remind me never to start a language during the summer again!), Elisabeth was having a blast at summer camp and Joseph started in pre-school. I can't believe it's finished now though. I ended up doing well in both of my classes, an A in German and a B+ in Francophone Cultures, being nice to the teacher must have paid off because there is no way I could have pulled a B+ with an 80, 80 and 68 on my first 3 tests. Anyhoo, my GPA has now risen again, from a 2.93 to a 3.07...I have finally made it back over the 3.0 mark!!!!! (I started last fall '05 with a 1.84, this is a huge jump in a year's time!)

Elisabeth had a great time at Y camp. She went horseback riding every week, swam almost every day, went canoeing every week, had fieldtrips twice a week...a full day of activities every day. I would certainly recommend the program to anyone.

Joseph is doing great in preschool...everyone loves him...and of course he is perfectly behaved at school :) He starts at Baby Gator on Monday, the preschool located on UF campus, costs much less than where he is now and has an excellent program.

I have been knitting as well. I completed my very first baby project, for my dear friend, Kirsten. She is expecting her 4th child in September. I made this sweater for her...I can't wait to see a picture of the new little on wearing it. I made it in the 12 to 18 month size so it will hopefully be useful for 2 winters, since our winters are so short here :)




Elisabeth's first days of school have been wonderful. She is doing very well and her teacher says she is great in class.

I will update more on that later...I need to take Joseph to school now and get on with my day.

We survived week one!

So it's Saturday...we have completed our first week with everyone in an activity all day long. I have two classes this summer semester, German and Francophone cultures. Elisabeth is in summer camp at the YMCA and Joseph is enrolled at O2B Kids preschool.

I am loving my German class...it is really fun to be learning another language...It has been so long since I have been in a first year language course, it is refreshing and I'm gleaning lots of ideas. Of course this is a little different in that this is a 6-week semester, so each day is like 2 days and Tuesday and Thursday we have a 2 1/2 hours class!

Francophone cultures is ok, I find the material interesting, le petit Maghreb (Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco), however the way the professor is teaching the class is less than desirable. She is giving us the material for the first part of the course, in the way of 3 movies, and then we will have a test. The second part of the course, as she puts it, will be built by the students; we have to bring in information from articles, etc... She will pull test topics from the discussions we have in class. I have no clear idea of what exactly I'm supposed to learn in this class, except to understand what le Maghreb is, this bothers me. German, I know, we will go through chapter 6, a clear goal...not so for Francophone cultures. Also, the prof is very detail oriented.

Elisabeth is having a blast in camp. She made a new friend on her first day. Alisha and Elisabeth seem to do everything together. Alisha braids her hair, Elisabeth shares her snacks...they are quite cute :) Elisabeth went horseback riding on Thursday...all by herself on her own horse...no adult leading the horse (I think they were in a fenced in path, but she was guiding the horse by herself) I am so proud of her :) She has also gone canoeing this week and they went to see the new Cars movie.

Joseph has had a good time at O2B also. He is so cute when I pick him up, he tells me everything they did during the day and what they ate for lunch and snack...very verbal little man. They were supposed to have a water day yesterday (sprinkelers and baby pools, I think) but it was rained out...next week maybe. He still clings on for dear life when I pick him up, but Mitch says he is fine at drop off.

So our week went well...the kids are happy...I am overwhelmed with information...it's going to be a good end to the summer :)

By the way BIG, BIG, BIG CONGRATULATIONS to Ben for passing your BAC and earning your Diploma...

I AM SO PROUD OF YOU!!!!!!!

Happy July 4th!

Wishing everyone a safe and happy Fourth!

Summer A finished!!

Well, tonight was the last class of my summer course on curriculum. All in all it was a really enjoyable course. The only downside is that I really have no idea what final grade I'll receive, we turned in our one writing assignment today and the only other grades we will receive are for annotated citatations that were due each week and a group presentation we did tonight.

So now I have a week and a half off until summer b starts. I will be enjoying this week with the kids. Elisabeth said in response to my class ending...good now we can go swimming because you don't have homework to do in the morning :) We cleaned and set up our pool this past weekend and it has been nice to use it this week. The kids are getting to be much better in the water.

I finally finished knitting my cardigan that I started right before our California trip, now it just needs buttons, I may go to Jo-anns this weekend and see what I can find. I will post pictures of my most recent knitting projects sometime this week.

Later :)

Oh my...I've become a very bad blogger

I knew I hadn't posted in a while...but I didn't realize it had been this long...Sorry Carole :)

So life is moving along. I finished my spring semester with 5 A's...including an A from Mme. Cailler...never thought that would happen. I'm in the middle of Summer A, my first summer semester, only 1 class for this 6 weeks, Elementary and Secondary Curriculum...it has been a good class, 2 evenings a week, primarily discussion, choice of take home long answer final or 2000 word research paper. In July, for Summer B, I will be in class every morning, taking German and Francophone Cultures.

We have Elisabeth signed up for Summer Adventure camp through the YMCA, starting in July. She should have a lot of fun. We will sign Joseph up for Swim & Gym camp at the Y. Elisabeth will be a Norton Elementary in the fall, 3rd grade, with me having to take 15 credits in fall and spring there was no way possible to continue homeschooling them. Very hard for me but she will be fine.

We had a wonderful vacation in California. We drove through the mountains around LA and stopped by Malibu Beach, went to the San Diego Zoo (which was fabulous!), Visited Balboa Park in San Diego and went to the Children's Science Center there, and went to Legoland. The whole time we were there the temperature never got above 75 degrees and it never rained...it was perfect, except for the fog/smog that was around every day.

We took so many pictures, about 400, that I can only put a small sampling here.

Well, we are off to a great start to Hurricane season 2006. Tropical Depression #1 in currently gaining strength in the Caribbean...forcast to be Tropical Storm Alberto by this evening and head straight toward us. But this would actually be the best case scenario...we need the rain so desperately that this rain would be welcome.

Well I'm off to work on knitting my cardigan.

Happy Easter!

Just a quick update to share pictures from this morning...


Egg hunting at home...
Egg hunting at church...
Aren't they cute...

Contrary to popular belief...I have not fallen off the face of the planet...

Things have been very busy lately and any down time I have had has been pure vegging :)

I am winding down to the end of my semester, April 26th is my last day of classes!! A few papers left to write, a few exams to take and all the while trying to keep up with the laundry, not happening!

By the way, how about them GATORS!!!

Did manage to watch that game...what a great game!

I have managed to almost finish making Elisabeth's Easter dress and a skirt for myself, and Daddy's socks.

I've got lots of pics to post and will do so soon. But gotta go spend time with the kids. Will update more later :)

Counting down to Casting on

Well, I'm all set for the Olympics...and the Knitting Olympics too! This is a picture of what I will be working on.

I decided to join team DPN, since I will be knitting a pair of socks on DPN (double pointed needles). I showed the picture of the socks I am knitting to Rebekah and the first thing she noticed was the map of Paris as the background to the photo...leave it to her :)

I will be casting on for these socks at 2pm local time, right between my two classes today. And I will have an hour of uniterrupted knitting time.

I am so excited that Mom will be here tonight!! So I should really go and start picking up some.

Hopefully I will post later today my progress on my Olympic socks.

My brand new knitting spot...

Well, it's not just my knitting spot, but our brand new sofa and loveseat :) The color on the left cushion of the loveseat is the most accurate in the picture.
Another view!

Elisabeth lounging!

Busy Bears

We have been busy here at the Bayer household.

My classes have been going well, my schedule this semester is turning out to be great. I am enjoying having my free hours on campus, I'm able to get most of my homework finished while I am sitting at Deja Brew, the coffee shop at Mitch's work (Target Copy). The only downside is that it is not helping my coffee addiction :) But that is a small price to pay to be able to work in relative peace without children and before 11pm.

This will be a busy week for me, I have a short essay due tomorrow (it is finished, I will just review it one more time before I print it tomorrow), a longer poetry analysis due on Thursday (both of these are in French), a test in my course on Adolescence, a take-home test in French Corrective Phonics due Thursday (this is pretty much completed, I just need to review it again, the teacher will also give us feedback on all the recordings we have had to do thus far), and a test in French Grammar and Composition on Friday. Oh yeah and I have a test in Man's Food next week. WHEW!!!

Writing all of that out makes it look really bad, it's not really as bad as it seems, well except that poetry analysis, I'm worried about that but I'll survive.

On the brighter side, I have gotten a lot of knitting done, I just haven't taken any pictures of it yet. And I have decided on my Knitting Olympics project...more details on that later.

I do have some pics of the kids on field day...our first day back with our homeschool co-op since before Christmas. It was a beautiful day as you can see from the sky shot above.

The kids had a blast...

I have some pictures from Becka's birthday to post but I will do that at another time...I also have some from our trip to the Jacksonville Zoo.


More later :)

Olympic Knit-along

I've decided to participate in a knit-along I believe I can actually finish :)


The Yarn Harlot is hosting an Olympic Knit-Along...you choose your own project, which should be a challenge but which you must be able to complete during the Olympic games. We start the project with the opening ceremonies and finish by the closing ceremonies. I think it sounds like a lot of fun...now to decide on a project. I am planning on socks of some kind, because it normally takes me a long time to finish a pair, I often get distracted by another project halfway through. Plus I can take socks with me onto campus for knitting in-between classes.

I will post more later about other stuff :)

Field Trip!

Yesterday was our first day back with our homeschool co-op since before the holidays. We started the year with a field trip...that's the best way to start. We visited Devil's Millhopper, this is a huge sinkhole here in Gainesville, it is 500 feet wide and 120 feet deep. It was perfect weather, overcast and cool, I think is was in the mid 60s, but a bit humid because of impending storms that finally came through last night.

I got some great pics of the kids...
This is our whole group (minus 1 or 2), we are small with mostly younger kids.

My 2 mid-way down. We were not able to go all the way to the bottom walkway because there was about a half foot of water covering the bridge/walkway.

Visiting the sinkhole is tricky because you go down all the stairs to the bottom, I think there are around 130 steps descending into the sinkhole; then you have to climb back up all those stairs. So the kids go bouncing down the stairs and on the way back up, usually before the first landing they start complaining they are tired. Well, Elisabeth did her usual complaining but Joseph climbed all the stairs and then did the entire 1/2 mile perimeter trail and not once did he say he was tired, I was so proud of him.

Elisabeth told me over and over how much fun she had. I asked her to write a short paragraph about our trip when we got home. This is what she wrote:

"My Trip to Devil's Millhopper (in very big letters across the top of the page)

I went to Devil's Millhopper with homeschool group and saw all my friends. There is a new girl. I had lot's of fun! I saw bones and I found 3 leafs sweet gum and it's pod, swamp chestnut oak and saw palmetto. My favorite thing was the sink hole!"

I thought she did a great job! The only prompt I gave her was to write about what she saw on our trip.

I also finished Joseph's Tiger socks. I have some nice breaks in my day on campus that I am able to do some studying and knitting. He is a proud boy in his new socks. They have some room to grow and will be nice and warm when we go to Michigan in March.

My classes went very well this week. I think this is going to be a great semester. I think I am really going to enjoy my French poetry class and my grammar and composition class is going to be great for me to really practice on my writing in French. Corrective phonics is going to be a really easy class, we sit in the language lab on the computers and practice saying phrases to improve our pronunciation. The Adolescent will be interesting despite the teacher, she is a grad student who is probably younger than I am, not much past adolescence herself. Now I am not against grad students teaching classes, I really enjoyed my Latin teacher last semester who was a grad student and I hope to be such a teacher in a year or so. But teaching languages is much different than teaching the development of adolescents and how to work with them in a classroom. And this teacher teaches straight from the handouts of notes she gives us, boring, give me additional information, I can read the notes myself!

We have had some beautiful weather this week also. I have thoroughly enjoyed finding a bench on campus and sitting in the sun, watching the people walk by, I enjoy people watching, it can be quite amusing at times.

Today we took Maisey to the park with us and she found a pug friend to play with. She was such a good puppy. Maisey is about 40 pounds now and still growing, being German Shephard/Huskey mix I imagine she will gain at least 20 more pounds. But she was great with this little pug which was about the size of our cats. We had a great day.

Monday is a day off of school for me. I will enjoy the time off, but I'm ready to get these classes well underway.

Anyway, enjoy the rest of your weekend! I will :)

First day of classes...2nd semester

Well, I have been a lazy poster these past few weeks. My plans of everything that I was going to get done during my break kinda went out the window. Not to say all I did was sit around and veg...but that was part of it.

We did get the kids' rooms decluttered and organized. I succeeded in not adding any more laundry to the clean clothes pile, thanks to my decluttered laundry room, which has new shelves and a nice workspace on top of the washer and dryer now. We dedecorated last week so the house is not in total disarray.

I made a little progress on Joseph's socks and I pulled out one of my unfinished cross-stitch projects. I have resolved to finish up all my ufos (unfinished objects) before starting on new projects (except gift items), that includes knitting and cross-stitch projects, doll clothes I will start because they can be cut out one evening and sewn the next in a short time, they are almost instant gratification. That said, I did pull out the doll clothes pattern book and cut out several outfits last night, to be sewn when I have the chance this week.

And today my classes start again! I am taking this semester: French Grammar and Composition (this is the class that comes before the French writing course I took last semester), French Corrective Phonics (a 2 credit language lab), Modern French Poetry (this is the same professor as my French writing course last semester, a true French teacher, she expect no less than your best, many students will avoid her classes, but I think she is a wonderful teacher), Man's Food (a nutrition course to fulfill my last biology requirement, online class) and Adolescence (my first class toward my secondary education minor).

My class schedule is not bad, MWF I have class from 12:50 to 3:50, with an hour break between classes and TR I have class from 9:35 to 1:40 with an hour break on Tuesday and a 2 hour break on Thursday. My knitting goes on campus with me, so I should be able to finish Joseph's socks this week and make some progress on the other 2 pairs I have started for myself.

Mitch and I got up early this morning, he has lots of deliveries to make this week, being the first week of class, this is the busiest time of year for the company. After "rush" he will go to only commercial sales, he has found it too difficult to do the on-campus course pack sales and successfully add to his commercial business.

Well, I need to push the kids out of bed, I've been trying to wake them for the last half hour. Joseph got up and climbed into my bed, but he won't move from there. Elisabeth hasn't even rolled over :)

More updates later.

Have a Great Day!