♥ Swing Dancing ♥

Joy just loves to dance!  She's danced since she was 3 years old - ballet, tap, and jazz.  This year she's been doing Chinese dance.  Lately, she has practically begged to learn to swing dance.  Well recently, she got the opportunity to learn a little swing dancing.

After a little inquiring about lessons, we were put in touch with another homeschooling group that was having an event with swing dancing instructors.  And then right after that, a long time friend of our family invited us to his graduation party where the theme was swing dancing taught by professional instructors.  Joy was excited to say the least!

Here are a few highlights from the party.......

The whole gang..... 

This is Trent (the graduating senior) and the adorable instructors!

Joy learned to dance with Trent at the first event, so they did really well together.

They pretty much rotated and danced with everyone, so everyone had a partner at some point or another.  You know how it is.....there are always more girls than boys! 

Later on, she got the chance to dance with the instructor.  He was SO good, so she was just going with the flow, but she had a blast! 

Even Luke was pulled into the action......

But he was pretty stuck to his sister when she wasn't dancing.

And of course, they couldn't end the party without a little line dancing........

This guy (Matthew) was definitely the life of the party.....he was quite the ham....as you can tell!

I think Joy is hooked on swing dancing now.  We are listening to swing music these days and she's really hoping to be able to take some more lessons in June.  But then I think she's kinda struck with the pretty dresses the girls get to wear too!  :)

♥ Tammy ♥

♥ Is She Chinese? ♥

“Is she Chinese?” That’s the question one of the girls in Joy’s Chinese dance class asked their teacher the first night Joy walked into class.  Joy got tickled at the question and asked her with a grin, “Do I look Chinese?” They all got a chuckle out of it and the teacher assured them that it didn’t matter if you were Chinese or not…..anyone could take the class.

We laugh about the fact that 2/3 of my children are Asian and the one that’s not is very interested in the Asian culture. This is Joy’s second year of taking Chinese as a second language class. In addition to that class, this year she is also taking the Chinese dance class. She just loves it. This class will perform at the Chinese New Year festival.

Her fan came from China and it just so happens that in this dance, they are dancing with fans…….just the kind she brought back from China.  It really is a beautiful fan that pops out with the neatest sound and just flows with the dance.



Instantly, Joy made friends with several of the girls…….Kaia, Annie, and Ying Jie. Kaia was adopted as an infant. Annie has Chinese parents but was raised here in the states, and Ying Jie has Chinese parents as well.  Ying Jie is a little shy, but Joy has won her over.  :)

From left  to right.....Ying Jie, Annie, Joy & Kaia

I hope I can video the dance when they perform it so you can see it. It is different from American dance, but it is pretty. You may remember Joy dancing with the ladies in the park in Hohhot, China. If you missed that post, you can see it here.  So taking this Chinese dance class is a very exciting thing for her!

So is she Chinese? Yes, a part of her is and always will be now. After traveling to China, it just becomes a part of you.  :)

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For Sandra's 31 days of fall challenge, I have another of Joy's pics to share.  She loves photography and got some wonderful photos that shout fall and she gave me permission to share with you.  The many leaves that collect on our sidewalk going up to The Cedar Loft:

 



Thanks for stopping by today!  Have a wonderful day!  :)

♥ Tammy ♥

♥ All Dressed Up ♥

My little girl is growing up! Joy was invited to a friend’s 16th “Sweet Sixteen” birthday party. She’s been so excited about it because it was a chance to get dressed up. It was a (semi)formal dress-up party followed by a swimming party. Great combination, huh? Perfect for Joy anyway, our girly tomboy.

After she was all dressed up and ready to go, her daddy just about changed his mind. He asked if there were going to be boys at the party and then quickly offered to stay at the party.  :)

I took a few pictures. ;)

With her brothers.....Colt and Luke

Colt’s girlfriend, Amber, came over and styled Joy’s hair. You may have seen Joy’s post yesterday that she linked for Pinned it, Made it! Monday. She pinned a hairstyle (on Pinterest) she liked and Amber (Colt's girlfriend), being the talented hair stylist she is, recreated it with Joy’s hair. It was beautiful!

The dress is hanging in the closet and her hair is pulled back in a ponytail now, but it was fun for a day to get all dressed up and feel (and look) like a princess.  Even when little girls grow up, they still like to play dress up.  Sigh…. I guess I can’t keep her little forever. I’m so thankful she’s a young lady with a good head on her shoulders and high standards.  :)

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Thank you to those who participated in my first Pinned it, Made it! Monday!  I appreciate you so much!  I had hoped for at least four participants for my first one and there were seven!  Thank you SO much ladies!   I enjoyed seeing what you pinned and made or tried!  Please join me again next Monday as we do the same thing all over again!  So get to work pinning and trying it out!  :)  And if you would help me spread the word, I'd be so very thankful for that as well! 

Thanks also for stopping by today and have a wonderful day!  :)

Days Around Here

I was so thrilled to see that you enjoyed my first Sunporch Chat as much as I did! It was so much fun. Ms. Betty was a wonderful guest! Thank you all for stopping by and for the kind comments! I know Ms. Betty appreciated them as well!

I enjoyed it so much that I know I can’t wait for an entire month to do another. I’m going to have to do this at least once every two weeks because it was just so much fun. So stay tuned for the next Sunporch Chat (which I will announce beforehand). I'm going to keep a link to each Sunporch Chat on the page above titled Sunporch Chats for future reference.  :)

These days I’ve been keeping cooking to a minimum, or as simple as possible,so as not to heat up the kitchen. It’s been so terribly hot and humid here. A lot of humidity came after the rain. I love my George Foreman grill. I used to have a smaller one, but treated myself a year or so ago to this one that I picked up at the day after Thanksgiving sale. It’s big and it’s RED.

It takes less than 4 minutes to make our hamburgers and it holds about 5 of our large sized ones. We like our hamburgers cooked on it with worchestershire sauce and/or Baby Ray’s BBQ sauce. It’s an easy quick supper, which leaves time for our bicycle ride before dark sets in. Do you have a George Foreman? Do you use it?

I have flowers again, actually Joy and I have flowers, compliments of Luke and picked off my crepe myrtle bush. “Just for the ladies”. Aren’t they cheery?

I’m kind of excited about a little something too…..Lois of Walking on Sunshine urged me to enter my chocolate gravy recipe in the Foodie Friend Friday linky party. So I did. I actually was one of the top three for the most clicks. Could be that folks were just curious about such a strange and fattening dish. Lol! Oh well, it was different among those healthy dishes. For whatever reason, I’m still excited. I even earned this button.

The rains brought blessings with it from our garden.

 We’ve gotten a few peppers.  They looked so funny that we couldn't figure out if they were bell peppers (they smelled like it but were shaped a little like jalepenos (see above).  We tried one and they were hot so we were stumped.  We only planted a couple of jalepeno plants and more bell peppers (right beside each other).  So we were thinking they were bell peppers but since they were hot, we just didn't know.  We're wondering if they could have crossed over somehow?  Anyway, with our peppers, we decided to try a little something.   :)  I took the following ingredients:

Cream cheese melted (I melted a full bar)
Bacon bits (real ones) (about a half of a little bag)
Creole seasoning (didn’t measure…just to taste)

 I mixed all that together and just stuffed in on those halves.

It would have made a better picture to get it BEFORE putting it in the oven, but I forgot!

They were good! And best of all, they were grown in our garden. They were a little spicy, but we like spicy. (Well, Jason and I like spicy).

Just waiting patiently now on those tomatoes!

We had a kid on loan too. You may remember seeing his picture here on my blog from awhile back. He belongs to one of the servers at our favorite Chinese restaurant. He’s only been here from China for less than a year. Well we love him and he likes hanging out with us when we go to the restaurant. He sits with us the entire time we're there. Anyway, his dad let him spend the day with us. His English name is Jason, but we still call him Heng Heng (pronounced more like Hong Hong). He’s five.

Anyway, after picking him up, we had lunch out, went to a playground, had Baskin Robbins ice cream, went to Dollar Tree for picking out a toy (because I know in Dollar Tree I can tell them they can pick any toy in there they want and I know it's within my budget),  :)....and then here to the house. He and Luke played all the rest of the afternoon.

After supper, he joined us on our bike ride. Jason sure got his work-out. He was pulling 100 lbs worth of boys in the Little Emperor ride – except he had two Little Emperors. They loved it.

Then we had to take him back. Wish we could just keep him. Lol! He’s a good playmate for Luke. And he's so adorable. We were probably pretty funny trying to communicate. One thing for sure, it was interesting!

Well as always, I appreciate you stopping by today and I hope you’ll come back tomorrow for Faithful Friday. Or better yet, join us!  (The button code that links back to her blog is now on my button page for you to grab).

♥ Tammy ♥

Friends, Family, and Faithful Friday

Long time, no blog post, huh? Time sure does get away from me!

I mentioned in a previous post that we were going on a trip to see our friends Kim and Chuck (whom we met in China). We headed their way a week ago, last Thursday morning. We had a great time with them!

First of all, let me say that they feel like more like family than just friends. We felt right at home there in their beautiful home.

We spent Friday just hanging around their home catching up on news and letting the kids play.

Chuck grilled out Friday night and we had a yummy steak dinner. As a matter of fact, we spent A LOT of time here at the table. Seems like we were eating all weekend!

I just loved their huge entertainment center and the big clock above it (which I didn't get in the pic).

Jason and Chuck spent a lot of time out here. And I can see why! Sitting on their screened porch, there’s a beautiful view into the woods!  They have deer that come to visit! It is so peaceful there! I told them if my dad ever came, they’d never get him to leave! His permanent spot would be right there on their screened back porch!  It's a perfect relaxing spot!  I told them we would be doing our school out there!  :)

See the deer?  One of the neighbors has a fence around their flowers because of the visiting deer.  :)

We enjoyed lunch at Fox Brother’s BBQ (known nation wide for their yummy BBQ and it didn’t disappoint) and then spent the rest of Saturday at Stone Mountain Park. We had a great time in spite of the heat!

Playing in Geyser attraction

Shiloh on the zip line.

Dakota and Joy on the rock climbing wall.

She made it to the top twice!

Riding the train around the mountain was a highlight for Luke.

The Kiddos....Joy holding Shiloh and arm around Dakota with Luke.

The only picture I think Jason made it in.  :)  The entire crew minus Chuck because he took the pic.

Then it cooled down and we enjoyed a picnic on the lawn in front of Stone Mountain and watched the laser show. It was awesome. It was very patriotic which is right up my alley! Very well done! We thoroughly enjoyed it!

The laser light show was shown on the side of the mountain.

Dakota and Joy were pretty tight.  :)

And this is Ms. Shiloh entertaining us.  The girl can dance.  :)

Sunday afternoon we headed for a local amusement park. Again, it was hot, but the kids had a blast riding all the rides.

Joy and Chuck are up there.  Later Dakota rode it with Joy too.  It takes you up and drops you.  Then back up and drops again.

Told you he's all about trains. :)  This was the space train.

Dakota on the bumper boats.

Luke escorted us around in the old car.  :)

I think Chuck rode just as many rides as the kids! Kim and I even rode the roller coaster to satisfy our kids and I also rode the scrambler. Jason was observer, encourager, and photographer (except for the go-karts...which he did ride with Chuck and Joy). I tell you that little Shiloh and Luke (both 4 years old) LOVED the roller coaster and rode it multiple times! They were little daredevils! No fear there in those two! They kept asking to ride it over and over!

That's Chuck & Shiloh in the front & Joy & Luke in the second car.

Rolling back in with arms up (now).  :)

Then Sunday evening, Chuck and Kim fed us a home-cooked Chinese dinner. It sure did hit the spot after a hot day at the amusement park. We ate way too much (but it was all delicious)! Now it’s diet time this week!

Thank you, Kim and Chuck, for your hospitality and friendship! We enjoyed our time with you guys so much! We miss you already! And to think it took these two from Inner Mongolia, China to bring our families together!  :)

I think both Shiloh and Luke look so reflective in these pics. 

As much as we hated to leave them, we left Monday morning and headed to Alabama which is where where my mom and dad were. We didn’t get to stay but a day and night, but we enjoyed spending that time with my Richie and Missy and their family too. Then it was back home for us. We had a full weekend and enjoyed it so much! We enjoyed riding in the more spacious truck (which drives like a dream by the way compared to my little Mazda).  Jason was thrilled to get better gas mileage than expected!     Now it’s time to get to work doing some maintenance around here, including whipping our pool into shape so we can swim! With all that’s been going on, we’re slower getting it ready this year, but it’s definitely pool time!  :)

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And I really do hate to end it on this note, but I need to ask for prayers yet again for our family. As I mentioned above, we were in Alabama on Memorial Day. My Uncle Junior and Aunt Betty (my daddy’s oldest brother and his wife) were there visiting from Indiana as well. We were actually with them on Monday. They headed home Wednesday morning (after we left Tuesday night), and were involved in a 3 car wreck in Kentucky around noon and both of them were killed. Richie called me last night with the news. I think we are all in shock and just numb right now. It just doesn’t seem real. This is a very close family…..all my dad’s family. We are all together fairly often in Alabama. This is going to be a hard (double) funeral. I don’t know when yet, but we will be headed to Indiana.  We would appreciate prayers for the family. They have 5 grown children, 15 grandchildren, and several great-grandchildren as well. And Uncle Junior is one of 8 children so please remember all the siblings too. One thing I’m thankful for is that Grandma had already gone on to be with the Lord when this happened and not here to bury one of her children. We do have the security of knowing both Uncle Junior and Aunt Betty knew the Lord. Again, sorry to end on that note, but we sure would appreciate your prayers.

"Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid."  John 14:27


Thanks so much for stopping by even though I haven’t been around as much lately! We invite you to participate in Faithful Friday.  Just grab the button above and let Joy know here on her bog.

I appreciate you all! Hope you have a wonderful day and upcoming weekend!  :)

~ Blessings~ Tammy