We Are The Wanderers!

Welcome to the Sottile 5 corner of the web! Today, I wanted to introduce ourselves on the blog, butI got a bit distrated when we had a runaway rabbit. We are still not sure on how she got loose or if she was taken, but for now we have been searching high and low and are only resting to sleep. Unfortunately, we are staying in the middle of the woods and it is frequented by a lot of wildlife, which does not bode well for a tiny bunny. Hopefully she will just hunker down until we can find her. She has been a house bunny since birth and this is not really an ideal situation.

The head of our family is also the 'fun' parent. Husband @ReadinTruckinAndSnackin on Instagram and I have been together 21 years and cannot believe that we have a graduating senior. Life goes by so fast, that we are so happy that we took the time, money and leap to travel and see the world with these kids. He is a linehaul truck driver with an awesome company that has him home every night and weekends off, what more could we ask for? His hobies are RC cars, Audio Books, Model trains and traveling. His favorite travel memory is taking our car tot he max on the Autobahn in Germany, he can't wait to get back there and try it again! Dad loves to game with the boys and shop with us girls. I would easily say that he is the laid back easy going guy to my high strung, always worried self!

Here I am, it's Michelle of @SheBreathesBooks and also the head of @OurWanderingAdventures social media pages. I am a book obsessed, restless wanderer that must always be planning a trip and on the move. I studied travel and tourism in college and that could explain my obsession with seeing all th enooks and crannies of our beautiful world. I'm a worldschooling mom of 3 that does all the planning for our trips and all the bookings as well. I can always be found at the pool with a book, snuggled on our couch with a book or sitting under the awning with a book....sometimes I even take the golf cart to the waterfront...with a book! LOL. I don't have a favorite destination yet but am eager to get back to Scotland love cruising and can't wait for our trip west.

@BakerStreetPrefect is our resident brain, who makes us so proud every single day! She is absolutely amazing to watch work and has incredible willpower. She has finished high school at 16 and volunteers every place we travel too. She is obsessd with collecting Junior Ranger badges at all the National Parks and Memorials. She is also my buddy reader, her and I love chatting about books and drinking tea...no matter what the temperature is. Her favorite travel memory is having her Quinceanera in Mexico tied with visiting the Harry Potter Studios Tour in London!

@KrazyCricutKid is our go-to Tech Guru that takescare of all things electronic for us and even manages to run several businesses on the road! He is a Cricut Craft Teacher, 3D Printing shop owner and even runs an off jobs business at all the campgrounds we go to, As if all of that were not enough, he is also a paid Fortnite Streamer and gets to say that he gets paid to play videogames!LOL. I absolutely love the hustle that this kid rises to every single day. He's all about the grind and we couldn't be prouder. This kid is all about dedication to what he does and loves traveling the world in search of the next great thing in tech. His favorite travel memory is seeing the London Tower Bridge for the first time.

 

@RomanNoodles.007 is our in house artist! Hel oves drawing and gaming and that's about it. He's always up for tring something new but he is definitely the homebody of the family and even when we are on the road, he much prefers to stay at the camper or at least get back right away. You can usually find him sketching along the water or playing videogames on rainy days inside. He is a huge graphic novel fan and even loves creating his own. His favorite travel memory is staying club level at the Grand Floridian and having a kid think he was Miguel from the movie Coco! He posed for photos with this family and even made the kids laugh when he insisted it wasn't really him, because they did not believe him!

Thanks for getting to know us and we welcome you back tomorrow to get to know our rig and site we are at for the moment!

Enjoy Every Minute!
~The Sottile 5

Not All Who Wander Are Lost...

Hello out there!!! It has been quite a bit since I have been in the habit of blogging and I need to get back into it, so here I am!

Our family continues to take more and more new paths as the kids get older and time sails by! We are primarily on Instagram but sometimes my captions get a bit ridiculous and I figured it was time for a new place for long thoughts and how tos and what not. 

Come along and join us as we travel the USA in our 40ft completely renovated Forest River Salem. On this blog you will get photos of our campsites, activities, renovation, future plans and what we are eating on the road. We spend aroud 8 months of the year traveling the country and then 4 months at home preparing for the next trip. Our goal is to continue to show the kids how big this world of ours is and that they don't ever need to feel anchored to one place.

Where in the world are we now? We have been in Northern IL at the Sugar Shores RV Resort in Durand, IL. This place is right on the Sugar River, which makes for plenty of fun adventures and around 2 hours from downtown Chicago. It's the perfect place to be in the middle of nowhere and relax and still enjoy a day trip in the city. 

Ou family is having an absolute blast, but be forewarned that we sometimes spend a month at a place and sometimes a night or 2. We tend to really let the wind blow us wherever we feel like exploring next or sometimes we just don't find the right fit at a campground. Full reviews of the places we stay at are usually on Facebook review sites, google reviews and our Instagram page also known as @OurWnderingAdvetures. Welcome to another corner of the internet that belongs to us and on our next post, I will introduce us as a family and then on Wednesday, I will introduce you to our camper! 

Welcome Aboard and Wander With Us!

And Then I Woke Up...

Hello everyone! My goodness, as I blow the dust off this blog I am left thinking about so much that has been going on over here. Bloggers out there in the world, do you ever have that feeling where even though you are busy every minute of every day (or at least it seems that way), they you are just not creating anything blog worthy? Yes, vacations and getaways are spectacular but at the same time...well I want to LIVE them and not be a slave to my camera. Have you reached the point where the school work that used to be cute and creative is just WORK now? I have taken photos of the kids at the board doing Algebra and yet what can I say about it? There are no cute games for Algebra! I had decided to step away for a bit and re-evaluate where this blog should go...and then I woke up.

There will always be things to blog about, meals to prepare and fun games to play and learn from. As the kids get older the posts may be fewer and farther between but there will always be blog worthy parts of our life, why? Because I love my life and every miniscule part of it. What may not be interesting to others, may in fact be a time capsule for my children to look back at when they are older. A digital scrapbook is what I have created and though I may not have been blogging for anyone in particular in the past, now I blog for them. These past few months have had us preparing for our County Fair with 4-H and all of their projects and judging and then they found out they made it to the State Fair and it was a whirlwind trip downstate. Here is my daughter at the fashion show for sewing. She made that skirt, those cuffs and that scarf. It's amazing what kids can do when you let their imaginations go wild. Me? I can't sew a button on straight and look at her, taking on the world. She went on to win the Champion prize in this competition!

As we continue down the path of growth, I will share the fun of being a parent to teenagers, the vacations we take and how to prepare for them (we are headed to the beach, Disney and a cruise VERY SOON!). I will still share my menu plans, the activities and sports in the world of homeschooling, along with just every day bits and pieces of my life. I may only blog once a month or every day for a week...it will happen and life will get in the way but I will try and keep a record of it as much as I can. I needed that wake up call, the realization that I blog for me, for them. It's easy to take photos and have them stack up in my phone but to be able to put some out there as a memory that will be here long after I am gone. It's something they can share with their own children.

The fair season took us down several new paths. At the beginning of Spring we brought home a new pet or shall I say our first ever pet. My youngest decided to begin raising a show rabbit and Carrots entered our life. It has been great fun and also been quite the lesson in responsibility. I am proud to say I have not once walked the rabbit (crazy right?!) nor have I ever cleaned his litter (he is a house broken rabbit). He is a Crème D' Argent bunny and is just about reaching his maximum size. It has definitely thrown a kink in many plans as we have brought a rabbit with us on vacation and camping and even on long road trips! Carrots has needed a sitter when we were gone too long and sometimes he even comes with to grandma and grandpas house!

While Carrots was being shown at the fair, my middle son fell in love with a new litter of Polish rabbits (not too new, they were 2 months old) and well of course one went home with us. Cocoa is the newest addition to our family and this will only get a wee bit bigger. It has been a lot of fun watching my boys grow up as they become responsible pet owners. This responsibility will follow them through life and it was something they needed to learn. We will soon begin showing them the cost of having a pet and discuss money and other things, I will post more about this in the future!

Out of nowhere, my shy and quiet middle son decided he wanted to do a food demonstration and enter that competition category this year. I was so PROUD to see him step out of his shell and take on this new challenge that I didn't care how he did, just that he was doing it! He ended up taking Champion on this too! It was an amazing moment to see his eyes register the win and me? Well I was the nerd mom crying in the second row. It wasn't because he won, it was because he was willing to tackle something new and though he was nervous he did it! If you care to see it, here is him practicing at home, I am laughing a lot and I don't even know if we finished the entire video but we were just being silly at home: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzwCit0-xb0

At the end of fair season, the kids entered 36 projects and ended up with 34 blue ribbons winners (my youngest has green as he is in a different age group) and 2 red ribbon second place winners. They worked so hard this year that they learned their hard work can take them anywhere they want to be. I was there to answer questions and of course help them find things but the rest was up to them and they did a phenomenal job with it all.

This Spring and Summer our National Parks passport has seen a lot of action as we took off in search of history, our swimsuits have been in lakes, oceans, rivers, streams, waterparks and hotel pools this Spring and Summer as we have ventured off many beaten trails to encounter new adventures. Our vehicle has had many miles of dirt roads, gravel trails and highways as we picked up and saw our surroundings but mostly our family has experienced so much time together that we have grown to learn more about one another. Small hotel rooms, tiny tents, cramped backseats, loaded train cars and over flowing buses...we have traveled them all in the desire to see more and learn more and we also came out loving more. The world can be anything we want it to be and as a family we are all seeing it through the same eyes and yet different ones too. Life is all about living and we are doing plenty of it.

As a new school year begins, we may spend some time in the classroom but we will make sure that we spend more time out of it. Learning is happening all around and life is sailing by, we don't want to miss a minute. We only have these few years with our children and if you take the time to realize that at 11 years old our oldest will only be living under our roof a handful of years more, it's why we do what we do. The bulk of her life under our guiding hand has come and gone so quickly that we need to hang on to these slivers we have left. The middle son is only one year behind her and the youngest 2 years behind him. The time goes too fast, though I want to take it all back and do more, I am eager to send them out into this world and see what they can do with all that they have been given and developed on their own.

Enjoy every minute my friends, the time goes and before we know it we only have memories...

   Follow Me On Facebook!
   Follow Me On Pinterest!

Menu Plan Monday

Happy Monday! I hope you all had a wonderful weekend, we certainly did and we managed to stay in town all weekend long, kind of! We had a lot on our schedule as it was the first weekend that didn't bring frosty temps to the Midwest. It was time to scrub down patio furniture after pulling it out of storage, put new sand in the patio cracks and fix any blocks that may look worse for wear. It was a nitty gritty kind of weekend and we were ready for it! The kids knew that they had to work hard if we were to be rewarded and the reward was a dessert party at the Drive-In movie theater to see The Jungle Book and Zootopia! We had already seen the latter but it was still such a good movie that we were ready to see it again! It was all phenomenal and we had a lot of fun! What did you do this weekend?

Now it's time for Menu Plan Monday! I found this spectacular Monday-Weekend pad of paper in the Dollar Spot at Target and figured it was much nicer than having to print something out or the more expensive pads out there! I LOVE IT! It fits right into my planner for grocery day too!

 

Monday: Spinach & Feta stuffed Chicken breasts with Green Beans and a garden salad. Served with Iced Black Tea.

 

Tuesday: Lettuce Wraps & Raw Veggie Platter with homemade hummus (portable for a cross country event and late night) served with Lemon Water infused overnight in waterbottles and strained in the morning.

 

Wednesday: Veggie Lasagna with a Caprese Salad & Iced Green Tea.

 

Thursday: Grilled Salmon and Squash served with a garden salad and Lemon Water

Friday: Couscous Chicken Soup with Homemade Dutch Oven bread

Saturday: Grilling and Bonfire Party

Sunday: Kids have a cross country race and then we will go out to dinner with family to celebrate afterwards.

Enjoy every minute my friends!

   Follow Me On Facebook!
   Follow Me On Pinterest!

Wednesdays are for Organizing!

Oh happy is the day when the office supplies comes out. I love to get the highlighters in a row, the pens in a rainbow of colors and the pencils sharpened just so. I enjoy getting file folders and labels, fun index cards and stickers, paperclips and pins, bands and tabs. Office supplies put me into an organizing coma and it was time for one, in fact is was long past time for a day like this. It was time to get organized for our county fair projects for 4H. We already have a lot of our books gone through, marked up and ready to create our exhibits but this was our day to get due dates, judging dates, supply lists and such all set.

The only place to hold a meeting like this is Starbucks. This is the perfect place for the kids to work and not be distracted AND get good treats while we are there too! I have 3 kids and each of the big kids is taking 11 projects and my youngest is taking 6. This makes for a lot of project books, glue sticks and poster boards! This day was spent labeling a file folder for each project, putting in any notes and sketches as well as project books. On the front of each folder we have half for due dates and the other half is for the list of items they will need for their display. On the back of the folder is a list of what is required for that project. 

As we were working and chatting, I starting reflecting on our second year of 4H and how excited we were starting out and how we still remain excited to this day. We have had so much fun getting involved in such an awesome club and even better we have learned so much. My husband has just signed on to coach a robotics team for the 4H this year and he is very excited for what this brings to him. He is a man that works 70+ hours a week and now he is adding this on too? That's just how much we believe and love this organization! Are you or your children or have you ever been a member of the 4-H?

Enjoy every minute my friends!

 

   Follow Me On Facebook!
   Follow Me On Pinterest!

Vintage Buttons Make Me Happy

I collect several things, but none so much as vintage buttons. If I see buttons, I have to have them all. I am someone that sees the buttons on a piece before I see the rest of the garment and have often bought things for the buttons alone and then torn them off, sewn on new ones and donated the unworn piece. Buttons make me happy, be it that they hold someone's history or the colors are so bright, the materials are so different or any other reason, I just enjoy seeing them.

I keep so many in jars that I cannot bear to part with, but I also craft with many of them. Button bracelets are one of my favorite things to make with them along with brooches, rings and of course putting them on clothing!

My children volunteer at our local history museum and this past weekend worked WWI days, where they work as village interpreters of children during that time. Here they are in the 1 room school house. Everything they do MUST be done in that time period, even the lunch and snack they bring. This of course sent mom on a scavenger hunt for the right drinking receptacles and lunch totes. They have been doing this for 2 years now and it has been such a learning experience for not only them but for those of us that go and see them too! Being on the hunt for certain items has led me to many vintage and antique shoppes and that has been so fun for my button addiction!

I was finally able to procure a basket with embroidered napkin for my daughter and a vintage lunch pail with lid for my son. They are using dairy glass jars for drinking and mason jars for their snacks, or they must be wrapped in brown paper.

At this past event, they had several vendors set up and I was able to pick up this super cute bag shown on the bottom left, I knew I loved it straight away but also knew exactly what it needed. I got right to work when I got home and added a line of buttons on the front pocket. Now it is absolutely perfect! This shout-out goes to The Hotsy Totsy Housewife for having such amazing goodies and I cannot wait for WWII days to see what else I will buy from her! The purse & the lunch pail were perfection but I also added on a skirt and wish I had picked up more!

Enjoy every minute my friends!

 

   Follow Me On Facebook!
   Follow Me On Pinterest!

Sunday School! Post #13

I really need to get better with posting on Sundays for my Sunday School post on the Catholic things we did in our classroom that week, but the weekends have just been insane lately! I still want to share these things and if I waited on them, the one Sunday post would end up being far too picture heavy! So here it is, Sunday School...on a Tuesday! All the other posts in Sunday School can be found HERE! In the photo above you will see a cross that we made out of metal clips. I love crosses as wall décor because they not only speak of our Faith, but seeing them everywhere is like a reminder that the Lord is always with us. I picked up these clips at Michael's with a 50% off coupon and really had no clue what we would do with them, I just loved them. When I figured that we should try and make something with them, my youngest thought a cross would be fun! After a lot of trial and error we came up with this and I love it. As we were working together, we discussed what we loved about being Catholic and what we still wanted to learn more about. This is a GREAT discussion to have on a regular basis, to see just what changes in and with your kids!

Why have we been so busy? My kids work (volunteer) their time at our local history museum and this past weekend was World War I days. My children dress as village children from that time period and perform different tasks as interpreters from that time. In this photo from my INSTAGRAM account, they are selling ice cream. They don't always work together, but I love when they do, because it makes for some great photos! I try to post daily over there, so feel free to follow me on INSTAGRAM and I will follow you back too!

One of my favorite things that we did this past week was make pendants out of cork from wine bottles! This was so much fun and we got to use up papers that would normally see the recycle bin! We use SETON as our curriculum and I absolutely love it, but one thing I don't like? Seeing all their gorgeous pictures hit the recycle bin as we finish a workbook. I try so hard to cut out the photos, but then my scrap bin begins to overflow and I have to think of what to do with them all...this was the perfect solution! I am even gathering enough supplies to do this with my Little Flowers Catholic Girls group! The full instructions are HERE!

With Divine Mercy Sunday being the Sunday after Easter, we had a lot going on in school but one thing that I absolutely loved doing was making a small chaplet for the kids to keep on their person at all times. It's small and portable, not only to serve as a reminder that the Lord is all around you, but to use in times of nervousness and stress. I like reaching in and praying along with it or even just feeling the cross if I get anxious over something. The beads move as you pray and I have also told the children to use them for keeping track of all the good you do in the day. Make it a point to do 11 good things a day and slide the bead as you go starting at the top (the Our Father bead) and working your way to the cross, which I likened to "working your way closer to God". I really enjoy hands on things like this, which allow us to chat as we work and then to also give them a visual aid once we are through with them.

One thing I speak about often is the need to visit church, even when we are on vacation. I turn this into a fun part of our touring plans as we are seeing a new place that is full of history and going to mass too! This church was in Mexico at the top of a LARGE mountain that had a VERY rough terrain to hike up as well as many wild dogs. This road is very rough on cars and shoes but in the end so worth the breathtaking views and vistas. They are remodeling the inside but what we saw was still amazing and the best part is that mass still goes on, even with the scaffolds and drop cloths everywhere.

Enjoy every minute my friends!

 

   Follow Me On Facebook!
   Follow Me On Pinterest!

Sunday School...But On A Monday! #12

**Just hover over a photo to Pin it to Pinterest!**

Yes, I am back and Yes, I have been neglecting this here blog! I am so sorry but I have just been so out of it that I needed to unwind and then get back into the groove of heavy scheduling! Being out of the country for a few months can really wreck your schedule, even if we were still doing school daily and keeping on top of everything. The biggest thing that seemed to be the game changer, was having zero internet for most of our trip. It was amazing to see just how reliant I am on something so simple and yet so unnecessary. Coming back has made me want to change a lot of things we do but I also need to find a happy medium. This post should have gone up yesterday but I am realizing that our weekends are still overscheduled! I do have a vacation update post coming that will hopefully post tomorrow or Wednesday!

Our Little Flowers Catholic Girls group meets for Wreath II tomorrow and we are ready to start this new round! The girls had an absolute blast learning everything last Wreath and I know that they are eager to begin again! The first thing I did to prepare for the wreath was to prepare our Memory Verse cards. I like to do this so the girls have them all in one place but also so that they can work on learning them anywhere they go!

Wreath I memory verse cards: https://docs.google.com/document/d/16sHqX3gOkG67rFu8cQzh8Lie1-lrm9WQCxLCiHyPDZ4/edit
Wreath II memory verse cards:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/17ol_0L_ehETQCTcVzt7lDyDKdsPWSk4ZMSimwdCbfA0/edit?usp=drive_web

These are the cards that I created, please feel free to use them for personal use, if you are reblogging or pinning, please give credit to my blog. For Wreath II, I shrunk them in my printer to make them cards but I created them bigger for a visual aid during the meeting.

These are our Wreath II Memory Verse cards. They still need to be laminated but we are running a bit behind schedule and I just wanted them done for the meeting. I will go back and do them in the coming days. I find that these verses also work well in our daily homeschool, so I print up some for my boys and we use them in our school as well!

I LOVE that I was able to find these totes at Family Christian for quite a steal! I bought one for each girl in my group and they can use them to transport their books, sash, bible and any miscellaneous items that we use on a regular basis. It's great to have it all in one place and they know just where it is on club day! Autumn hangs hers on a hook in her room, so there is never any confusion!

This is Autumn's bag with the pin that we made during the Getting To Know You meeting. This is a meeting that we hold before we begin learning anything. It is a preparation meeting where all the parents discuss our goals and possible field trips and the girls play Saint games and do crafts in order to get to know one another. Having the bible verses on a binder ring allow them to not only become portable but also allow them to be hung anywhere!

I wanted to share with you a fun game I was able to put together using the Behold Publications Little Flowers Wreath Stickers! I purchased wood discs from Michaels and painted them on both sides, then I put a sticker on each one and sealed it with mod podge. SIMPLE! Now these discs needed to be paired up with 2 of each virtue in 1 bag and they became the most beautiful and fun memory game.

How To Play:
1. Turn all discs on blank side
2. Make a Match
3. In order for that match to be your point, you must recite the memory verse or Saint that displays that virtue. If you choose to mention the saint, you must also share 1 fact of her life.
4. Girl with the most pairs wins and both win because they have learned so much more!

Here is one game tucked neatly into a small pouch to make them easy to tuck into a bag or purse! These embroidered pouches were made by my daughter in a class she took in Mexico. What a great gift for the Little Flowers in our group!

Enjoy every minute my friends!

Check out all the other posts in our Sunday School section HERE!

 

   Follow Me On Facebook!
   Follow Me On Pinterest!