Sunday Finery

Here’s a picture of Stacia at 7 weeks. We’re on our way to church and she is NOT in pink. 

This Sunday we attended the Gospel Service. We love to visit this service and had not been in it for over a month. RE (Sunday School) had been cancelled so we opted to attend the 2:00 Gospel Service instead of the 10:30 traditional. Sister Cheryl is dying to get a chance to spoil Stacia.

At the service they gave Nolan a tambourine. He had a blast making a joyful noise. Somehow Zander got it when we went up for offering so he entertained one and all as he danced and jingled up to the offering plate. Pastor Floyd had a great message from I Sam 15 about appearances and obedience. During the sermon he would say “Amen” and Alex loved the chance to yell “Amen” at the top of his lungs. We are blessed that Pastor Floyd and Cheryl enjoy children.

BIKES GALORE!

We’ve discovered the terrain in this part of the States is much more bike-friendly. The kids had tried valiantly to learn to ride bikes in Alaska but our block was on a hill, add snow, ice and short winter days and there just wasn’t much time to learn to ride. Arielle had begun to make real progress in Alaska. She was thrilled when we got the bikes out a couple of weeks ago to discover that she could still ride. She’s made great progress in the past couple of weeks.

Zander had decided he didn’t need a bike and would ride a scooter instead. The problem being that he is a dare devil and we didn’t like him on the scooter at all. Boy he can make that thing go! Josiah and Jamin chase him on rollerblades. We decided it was time to take stock of the bikes we had, buy a 12 in one for Zander and set out to teach the boys to ride. Mike has a “thing” about training wheels. He’s determined that the way Dad Earl taught him to ride is THE way to teach a child to ride. We found Arielle’s old hefty, YERF tricycle and got it outfitted for Zander. At this point Zander took 3 minutes to figure out the pedaling thing and away he, Arielle and I went. He charmed the neighbors by yelling, “Mom, Look at me! I Ride Like the WIND”.

Meanwhile, back at the home, Mike had found a bike that would fit Nolan. He had lowered the seat, pumped up the tire, put pedals back on and was teaching Nolan to ride his bike. Nolan did quite well. He was able to ride from our house to the next by himself…”with dad a little bit behind me”. The beauty of this training system is that Mike is going to get plenty of exercise riding along behind Nolan. If we can find some time this weekend to ride bikes, I think Nolan will have it made.

Family Weekly Digest

Problem:
Not all of you will have the time or inclination to read all our blog entries. Others want “all the details and photos too”.

Solution:
For those who want “just the facts”, I’ve created the Family Weekly Digest. It appears that I may only be posting updates once a week. I write them during the week and in the wee morning hours I can upload them and their corresponding pictures. My plan (open to tweaking) will be to post a digest on the blog every Saturday a.m. I also realize that some don’t have time to even log on to the blog….so I’ll send this digest out to family when I post it on the web each week.

Note:
*means there is an entry with more details on the blog about this line item
**means there is an entry with photos on the blog about this line item

Week of 2 October

**~We send our first care package to the girls!

~We talked on the phone to both BreAnne (Monday) & Krista (Sunday). They had a great week at Master’s Commission. The theme of the week centered on servant leadership, they were able to attend an Open Bible Ladies Retreat, and are busy preparing for an outreach to local schools and INSTE (academics) which began this week. We’ve not talked to them yet this week. They have both been able to try to answer they many emails that this family has generated to them each week. They had a couple of memory tests this week that both are doing well on. Please do continue to pray for them as they step into new roles.

**~Tennis joins our roster of Family Fitness Activities

*~A “vicious puppy” followed us home Monday from a walk (story by Arielle)

**~Nolan lost his first tooth, visited the doc for mole check up/speech referral

**~Football Funny and Jamin’s football team is featured on the front page of our newspaper

~The boys attend “Flipside”, a local youth group held in an old theater…will this become their new “youth church home”?

**~We make volcanoes and explode them (along with an exploding nose!)

~We continue to love the dynamics that have been added to our family and school by having all the children using Tapestry of Grace this year. We are having some great Socratic discussions….in the living room, in the van, around the table. Sunday night Josiah gave a 3 min speech to us on Beethoven, Jamin gave a 3 min speech on Verdi, Nolan recited the alphabet, and Jared read a paper on Robert Fulton and Arielle gave a speech on Mars.

~Late breaking news – Zander has changed the language on our computers to German….sigh…

EXPLODING VOLCANOES
Or
AFTER 16 YEARS OF HOMESCHOOLING I’VE FINALLY USED SALT DOUGH ~ BUT IT WASN’T FOR A MAP!!!

7 October

A recurring joke among real life and cyber friends is that I’ve managed to homeschool for 16 years without making a salt dough map or lap book. Both of these are used quite a bit in Tapestry of Grace; but I’d even managed to avoid them last year.

However – THIS year….well did you know that the biggest Volcano in our solar system is Olympus Mons and that it is on Mars? We had the option of making and exploding a volcano. I was skeptical. The last hands on science experiment *I* planned was when the four older ones were in elementary school. I needed to boil an egg, which we began and then promptly forgot due to an interesting read aloud book. We heard an explosion and the egg had hit the ceiling. This time the project was SUPPOSED to explode. What could go wrong? I decided to give it a try. (Side note – we’ve DONE experiments before – but only when Mike was home).
The younger ones and I headed to Wal-mart for flour, vinegar, baking soda, food coloring and salt. We came home on Thursday to make our volcanoes. We were supposed to use “small, plastic aspirin bottles” but I didn’t have any and I didn’t want to buy 4 bottles of aspirin to empty and use. (I’d done that the week before for Jamin’s biology experiment – bought four jars of Ovaltine). Thanks to Zander’s fascination with play dough I DID have four play dough containers. We began to mix up salt dough…we had to make 6 batches of it….(Yes, SHS ladies…the Bosch Mixer handled the load quite easily!) I think Alex (or Zander) is a budding scientist. He loved this project. Note the fine china on the plate stacker ).

ANYWAY, Thursday, we made four volcanoes. This came off without a hitch. We did discover that I seem to be an outside of the box type of person. I found that I was inspired by the dough. I thought I could make a mold of my face (ala Jan Brady) and impress the kids. The salt dough stung my eyes. I settled for making a nose. I made a mold of my nose, complete with nostrils for breathing or spewing lava. At this point we set aside our 4 trays of volcanoes, and a nose, to dry overnight. (I was actually a bit nervous about exploding things, given my prior record, and decided to wait for Mike to be home to supervise).

Mike is a great, by the book type, guy! He measured, poured and supervised as 4 perfect volcanoes erupted in the color of each child’s choice. It WORKED! They were very cool. This is a good time to mention that we are using “Exploring Creation with Astronomy” by Jeannie Fulbright and published by Apologia as our science text. This text takes a Charlotte Mason approach to science. We cover only one topic a year (though this is our second year on this for my young set (2nd, 1st grade, and Zander). By covering one topic a year we are able to really explore it. I believe the text is meant for older elementary kids but my younger ones love it as well. We plan to do the Botany book next…..we’re over ½ way through this book. Thanks to Jeannie for writing a text that is fun, informative, includes hands on ideas and gave me the courage to try another experiment.

After all the real volcanoes had done their thing….I HAD to see if my exploding nose would work. There was some discussion as to how I planned to do this. I added all the ingredients except vinegar to Zander’s previously exploded volcano. I then put the cost of my nose on top of Zander’s volcano, poured the liquids through the nostrils and whammo!!! It worked! The kids were very impressed…I put so much “juice” in the thing (not being a by the book type of gal I hadn't measured) that it oozed not only out the nose but out the sides, ears etc.

Next week we begin a chapter on SPACE ROCKS!!!! I wonder what adventures we will have then!

Football Funny

Coach Trevor & Team - Jamin #3

Funny thing happened at the game this evening. Jamin was a bit nervous about starting and being the um….offensive front line something or other. This meant he would be responsible for tackling and stopping the opposing team - in particular he was to protect the quarter back.

We were all excited when he made the first tackle of the game. There had been an article in the paper Friday morning about TLC’s football team and the role that faith played in their great season. It seems when Jamin made the awesome tackle some purple/ red-headed, blonde-streaked lady in the stands yelled “That’s it son! We’re into the Philistine Principle – none of that turn the other cheek stuff tonight!” He was fearsome. He sat that huge boy right down on the field. I also quickly noted that one of our players seemed to keep loosing his pants when tackled. Josiah finally convinced me that I was seeing beige pads and not TLC hiney. Unfortunately, as the game wore on the ref called a couple of personal fouls on my favorite warrior – um football player. In fact, I noted that several of these very nice Christian parents were about to loose their witness due to questionable calls. Determined not to be one of them, I simmered down. It helped that Mike had his hand firmly planted on my leg and was saying “don’t go there, De’Etta”.

Jamin got to play quite a bit this game. That’s a great thing for a Freshman. When he got home I was telling him how proud I was of him. THIS is the funny thing that happened. Jamin replied, “I held them” and I said, “You sure DID. No one got by you!!” I noticed the boys were sort of smirking and looking at each other a bit uncertainly. Mike said, “De’Etta you’ve misunderstood”. Jamin got called for HOLDING….well shoot….he did stop the charging line. The coach was happy with him and I’m sure they’ll have lots of time this year and in the future to work on that holding thing.

I’ve still not attained to the full stature of “TX Football Mom”; but I sure do enjoy having the family out together, watching one of our own pursue his interest, and knowing that all that energy had to come out somewhere…thanking God it’s on the football field and not the living room floor. By the way, they really do name children Bubba down here. And they constantly slaughter Jamin’s last name over the PA system.

NOLAN

Nolan lost his first tooth this week!!!! He is quite proud of himself. He also got to visit the doctor where we discovered that his has an “angel mole” but that it is nothing to worry about.

The pediatrician, Dr. Carroll, seems very nice and competent. She’d never seen a white circle around a mole like he has and immediately went to find the head dermatologist.

She’s very willing to give us a referral for speech therapy but said we have to talk to the school and get a “non-availability” statement first. She doesn’t think this will be hard for us to get. We’ll look into it next week. She had lots of good things to say about the rehab center where they would send Nolan for therapy. Stay tuned….

TENNIS

Tennis has arrived in our home. I have no idea why we’ve not tried this before! Mike was quite good in high school…part of a winning doubles team.

Monday we walked to the park with 3 rackets and one ball. Not a great plan…especially since the ball may have been around since BreAnne was a toddler. Mike ran the kids through drills and basics. We left the park with a list of things I needed to buy. Tuesday found Josiah and I at Wal-mart where we picked up: JR rackets for Arielle, Nolan and Zander, a dozen new balls that BoUnCe!, and a tennis bag to carry it all in.


We’ve spent quite a few afternoons/evenings investigating this new family activity. We are dreaming of fun, fitness and all on a price the budget can afford! I look forward to the day when they know the basics well enough to give Mike a workout on the court!

Just the basics

FIRST CARE PACKAGE

We sent our first care package to the girls this week. What fun to shop, cook and package it up. The little ones and I decided to roam through Wal-mart and see what inspired us. We ended up with an eclectic mix of things…Vit C, Kleenex, high lighters, chocolate chips, notepads, animal crackers, homemade peanut butter/chocolate Rice Krispy treats and I can’t remember what else. I made up little notes to explain each item and Jared attached them to the items. For example attached to the Chocolate Chips “For those times when nothing but mainlining chocolate will get you through the day” and attached to the animal crackers “for the days when you think you’re in a zoo…open the box and regain your humor” etc.

My favorite item was the family hug bear “for the times when you feel like you need a hug from home.” Each member of the family took turns hugging the bears (one for each girl). I sprayed my hallmark perfume on the bear. Mike, not to be outdone went and doused them with his cologne, we drew the line at Stacia spitting up on them.

Arielle, Nolan and Zander helped to make the treats. Krista reports that they tasted like Ziploc…..guess I need to figure out a new way to package goodies. I’m open to suggestions. How do you all package cookies, brownies, to ship?

The crowning touch was wrapping the boxes in the paintings that Nolan and Arielle had painted this week. Mike reports that the clerk at the Post Office and I managed to back the line up all the way to the lobby with our chat about where the packages were going and why the girls weren't with me. Our prayer is that the package will be as fun for the girls to receive as it was for us to prepare.

Making treats for the girls: doing math too….4 sets of 10 marshmallows

Jared attaches labels

Mike sucks air!