Wow! Summer has kicked off with a blast! It's hard to believe that it is almost the end of July. I've been working on my book and it's almost ready to send to press! It will be exciting when it comes out this fall! Next month, I will start publishing excerpts from it on my blog just as a little freebie for everyone! On the homeschooling side, I've been looking at and putting together our curriculum for this coming year. We love the eclectic style-we just seemed to fall into that category. We love nature and the outdoors and narrating, so Charlotte Mason style fits us there; we love using real books to learn about history and people and places, then doing activities and such surrounding what we're learning, so unit studies fit us in that aspect; we also want to learn how the world fits in with our Christian worldview and so we apply that with the help of Apologia Science, among other great Christian books. To help pull all this together, we will also be studying Latin roots of English grammar, writing, math, French and Spanish languages, art, music, culinary arts, life skills, computer technology, and a plethora of sports and other areas/activities that we are interested in pursuing! (We just learned kayaking and went out to the Channel Islands and Ventura Harbor on a couple of different weekends!) My son just returned from camp at Hermosa Beach with over 100 other Jr. & Sr. high schoolers. They went as part of our church's youth summer program and had a great time. He said there was a fantastic speaker from Georgia and it was just a really life-changing experience there. Of course, he also got stung twice by a jellyfish! All in all, he says he can hardly wait for the winter camp that comes next and takes place in the mountains! Our community football league starts up tonight! My son will be starting quarterback and hopes to play all season-he was injured last season in the first week when several guys sacked him and his ankle was badly twisted. Thank God the heat wave we've been having seems to have cooled down a bit; I think it's only in the 80's so far!