Reunion Cake

Yesterday, we attended a family reunion that brought together my father-in-laws side of the family.  My husband helped coordinate and organize the reunion with the help of lots of family members.
My father-in-law is one of 12 children! There were 3 girls and 9 boys in the family.  Currently, 5 out of the 12 children are still living.  So those that attended were my husband's immediate family, aunts, uncles, cousins, second cousins, third cousins... :) This was the first reunion like this in over 25 years and it was so nice to gather with so many generations under one roof.  Usually we see some of these family members only at sad occasions like funerals so it was a blessing to see everyone during happier times.  There were about 80 family members that gathered.

Each family brought food to share and there were alot of delicious dishes! I brought the homemade white cake with homemade cream cheese icing that I made for my daughter's soccer birthday party and my other daughter's horse cake.  I decorated the top of the cake with the monogram of an "S" which stands for the Smith family.  It was a great time and I hope we can meet with everyone again soon!


Pantry Organization
Since I have been shopping this past week like crazy at Harris Teeter finding all the good deals for Super Double Coupon week, my pantry has looked a bit messy as I fill the shelves with all my good finds:
I had a helper today....


And we got to work today reorganizing the shelves which was quite helpful since I now know what NOT to buy with coupons during the next several weeks. Here's the organized pantry:

"Blog-cation" for Homeschool Planning

This will be my last post until the end of the week sometime since I will be using my "blog-cation", or break from updating my blog posts, to start planning my homeschool lessons for this upcoming school year.  I have ordered most of my books and I have to still go through the 6 boxes of new curriculum that I ordered and then plan out a schedule of how I want to use the resources and when.  So I thought leaving blog land for a bit to concentrate on lesson planning will help me stay better focused on the overwhelming yet exciting task of trying to plan out what will be best for my children. 


I will have the July No Ordinary Blog Hop (NOBH) post up by Friday, July 1st so be on the lookout for the new July NOBH post with new buttons and friends to meet!

Speaking of homeschooling, I encourage you to go over and visit Hip Homeschool Moms today and read a great post by Jenny Butler, a public school teacher, NOT a homeschooler.  She explains why homeschooling is the best for a family that chooses this route.  I thought it was an interesting post coming from a different point of view.  I hope you enjoy reading it, whether you homeschool or not. 



Join the crew at  No Ordinary Blog Hop (NOBH) !