I am so happy with the opportunity to have the kids do PE with other homeschooling kids and moms. They love the mom who volunteers to lead the class time. They have fun and get exercise. Today was 107 in town! So we met early (8:30AM) and had water play. You’ll see our new dog Chloe, the latest addition to the Peace household. We got her free from Craig’s List and the kids love her. By the way, Alyson turns four next week! Hard to believe!

The kids loved going to Palm Springs and visiting the mountains, going horseback riding, fishing, playing at the beach, and just hanging out with grandma and grandpa. My aunt and uncle were also able to visit for a couple days during that time. My parents took this family picture of us after one of Jonathan’s basketball games (his team is 6-3 with the last game on Saturday.) Last night he scored 14 points!

I love Usborne books and have my own bookstore online that is open 24/7. I am offering a rebate check on the costs of standard shipping on your first order of 2009. Check out all the titles at www.jessicapeace.com. This is an easy way to get birthday presents!

Well, the Peace kids are still in shock. From a high of five, we are back down to two. The fish died yesterday. On the same day, someone came to adopt our guinea pig via an ad we placed on Craig’s List. Dan and I were tired of the odor of the guinea pig, the cost of supplies, and changing the cage. The kids only seemed to play with him when we reminded them. So, it is nice someone else really wanted him. The saddest event is that we had to return Tinkerbell after only a week. We had no idea the extend of her troubles with potty training and we are renting a house. We tried our hardest but it wasn’t working.




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Our great pool

The Peace family has agreed the best part of our house in Fresno is our pool. As we move August 8-9 and have to rent out our house, we are enjoying every swim. We have rented a house in Hemet that sounds great but no pool….

Jonathan is a true fish. He is swimming well, diving to the bottom to get rockets, floating, etc. Mackenzie has learned to swim this summer! Her cute doggie paddle gets her around the whole pool. Alyson has ventured off of the stairs in the shallow end to being held in my arms while she kicks. I enjoy looking at the pretty orange flowers and being outside. We have even seen a hummingbird.

Our peach tree in the backyard has taken off. We have picked over 100 peaches. Yum!




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Here’s the kids enjoying time with my mom and dad at Yosemite.

Here I go again, two or three months between posts! What is the secret of successful bloggers? Obviously, I do not know. I do not seem to be able to juggle all the balls right now, that’s for sure. I do love reading blogs! Ok, I promised an update on the Peace kids. Let’s start with Alyson (who will be three July 29th). After a record-breaking week of over 100 degree temperatures, Alyson is thrilled because she can once again wear her favorite Winnie the Pooh pink sweatshirt with hood in the 70ish degree weather. It was a traumatic couple of days when I had to tell her no. I was afraid she would have heat stroke! She is talking more and more these days and her favorite story right now is The Three Little Pigs. She’s quite the drama queen with her “huffs” and “puffs”. Today when we were painting Egyptian paddle dolls for school, she was right there with us painting away. Mackenzie is a happy five-year-old- most of the time! Clothes are a battle for her as well. I refuse to pick out her outfits because she never likes what I bring anyway. I love to collect her notes and art projects. She writes up a storm and makes very cool pictures. Her latest invention was turning an old Costco animal cracker jar into an aquarium. She then put some plastic animals in and pretended to be working at an aquarium showing kids the animals and telling them how to touch them. She thought her daddy was the best when he said she could get a betta fish to put in. So that was our excitement for Sunday afternoon, picking out Coconut. Her name choice! Jonathan (8th birthday is June 10) is cruising along with reading, which is a relief to my heart. He has always loved and been good with math, but reading brought struggles and frustrations. Things are going well now and it is fun to see him sounding things out and pointing out words he knows in the chapter books we are all reading together. He has listened to all the Chronicles of Narnia on CD now, loves the Flat Stanley book series, and we have read over seven Wizard of Oz books. He loves to be active and is happiest shooting baskets in the backyard or kicking the soccer ball around. Jonathan and Mackenzie were both in t-ball for seven weeks. JJ liked it; Mackenzie tolerated it and said she likes playing soccer and basketball much better! We all enjoyed having my parents out to visit for almost two weeks. The highlights were camping trips to Monterey (with a visit to the aquarium) and Yosemite. I could live in Yosemite, it is so beautiful. We didn’t see any black bears though, despite having to put all our food in bear-proof food lockers. Well, this got long! I hope to be a bit more reliable in posting, but I have learned not to promise!