There are only *3* days left of free bowling. The summer is truly drawing to a close. Today I took Bre, Krista, Arielle, Nolan and Zander bowling. Jamin and Jared had their orientation at House of Faith. All had a good time.

After a bit of bowling we headed to the park for an hour because I didn’t want to rush home and then back across town to get the boys. While at the bowling ally (we were quite a crowd with Adrienne’s Family, Tricia’s family, Kelley’s family and my family) we were asked if we homeschool by a mom who was there alone with her children. It was fun to visit with her and give her info about homeschooling in the community.

I went up to the clinic TWICE today. The first time to check on getting care for Krista while she is home. It appears that this simply isn’t going to happen. THEN I was called back to the base because they had decided to refill Josiah’s meds instead of giving us an appointment. It was funny that I ran into Mike at the pharmacy. He was getting a huge bag of meds to take with him. By the way, I kept my attitude and tongue firmly in check today while dealing with Tri-care….

I think we are going to have leftovers tonight. We have extra food from Sunday, I made potato cheese soup last night and that will make for an easy evening. The kids have started a game of monopoly.

Freebies

I forgot to say that at Mom's Night Out they had a freebie table. What a great idea. I now can put things THERE when we move instead of sending them to Goodwill.

I picked up a set of an economics course from BJU (complete with 3 workbooks, teacher manual and tests), a book called "Webbing with Literature" that looks like it will easily integrate with TOG and two copies of Zoobook.

One of my greatest finds was a copy of *The Old Schoolhouse*. Being a visual- show me type person I have been wanting to see a copy of this magazine to decide if I want to subscribe. The last homeschool magazines I received were years and years ago. I quit getting them because they were ALWAYS late and saying "forgive us we're a homeschool family". I always wanted to write back and say "Money's short - we're a homeschool family - don't worry if my payment is 6 months late". :::snort::: That's sort of my pet peeve. I'm always willing to extend grace when situations are out of a persons control but these were two well-known business names, they took my money, and I felt that they should publish on time instead of sending little notes explaining why they never published on time. Both magazines were also from a very definite theological background - and it didn't really match mine. LOL This was so LONG ago that the internet was JUST getting popular and I decided that the internet would have support that I needed in a timely fashion. However, this magazine looks like it may be a fun one to have and at least it LOOKS very professional. If any of you have done business with them - feel free to warn me if they are late each month. LOL I'm excited to sit and wait somewhere and read this. Sitting and waiting time will not be hard to find....I still have to deal with Tri-care today in an attempt to make two appointments. LOL

My greatest find is another program I've been wanting to SEE. Jodi, I picked up the Yellow Book of Learning Language Arts through Literature for FREE. The lady who had it on the table said she's had it for free at three meetings and no one ever picked it up. She said that she didn't think people realized what it was. I agree. LOL I'm excited to check it out - but I'm not sure the level is one that "fits" for us this year.

A better Monday than last week!

God really loves Mike…it has been raining all day….in fact….there had to be 2 rescue attempts for cars on the main road that connects our street to others… Of course, I know that God loves us even when we don’t see tangible results to our prayers…but I can’t help taking all this rain as a sign. We were 4 days away from having NO rain in the entire month of August. It would have been a record for this area. I felt sort of “unscriptural” for letting the rain remind me that God loves Mike….but then I realized…hey God likes to give us SIGNS. Remember the rainbow to remind us that he’ll never flood the earth again? And all the feasts to remind the Israelites of His might work among them? And The Lords Supper? I guess He won’t mind if the rain from here on out reminds me that He cares about the things we care about and that He loves us. {G}

I moved the antique hope chest from the foot of our bed and moved Stacia’s crib from the middle of the room to the foot of the bed. Now I realize that it is directly under the ceiling fan – so this may not work. I wish I was the type that could visualize WITHOUT moving furniture. LOL

I spent quite a bit of time on the phone today. Anytime I have to call tri-care (handle medical appointments and such), I cringe. I had hoped to get an appointment for Josiah to get his acne meds refilled….but oh no….that is not to be. I’m not sure WHY but the girl didn’t want to give us an appointment. She then decided that she would talk to the doctor about simply refilling the med. That would be fine. I’m not sure what they decided!

We then called Walgreen’s to make sure that if we got Krista a prescription she would be able to have it refilled in Spokane. She had meds when she lived here but they had to be refilled at a base – and the base was 45 min across town. This doesn’t seem like too long of a drive every few months – but with their incredible schedule – it was. Walgreen’s is less than a block from the church where they host Master’s Commission. I figure they’ll give her time to walk a block. She is trying Proactive but seem to need the meds as well. Since Walgreen’s can do this, ALL that remained was getting an appointment for her to get the script. Locally the appointment line told me to call national. National they told me to call local. National was snippy and totally unhelpful – she couldn’t even give me the number of the local service center. I called the chapel and got a machine. I asked Mike to let me know if he had a number for the local tri-care service center. I hung up – BUT evidently our phone doesn’t’ always hang up. I mean you could hear the click on the machine. . . but then you could hear me turn to Bre and say, “every time you have to deal with tri-care it’s a pain in the butt” and I went on to detail my frustration. ::::blush::: I hesitated to share that – but I’ve asked God to forgive me and well…it was sort of funny and should remind you all that I don’t claim to be perfect...of course the fact that my tirade was caught on the chapel answering machine only made it more ironic. One of the chaplains did preach yesterday on humility and pride…I guess I was humbled. I called the patient advocate and left a message that I needed to talk to someone that would let me know if I could have my college-age dd who was home seen about moles and acne. I’ve not heard back on either Josiah or Krista’s appointments…which means tomorrow will be another day of dealing with tri-care.

We DID manage to get an appointment set up with our neighbor to go get facials and makeovers on Friday.

While Stacia napped, Krista and I ran to Sam’s club. I bought MILK (we are ALWAYS OUT!!!) and formula. I also ordered a cake, and lots of deli trays for Mike’s promotion reception on Thursday. Any of you local folks are welcome to attend in the base Fellowship Hall at 1:00 p.m.

Tonight was the first Mom’s Night Out of our homeschool support group. The night has been changed to Monday this year (last year it was on Tuesday and which is Ladies Bible Study night at the chapel).I look forward to attending. (Did you read that Adrienne? A is the director of MNO :::snort::J.) Tricia picked me up and it was fun to drive over with a friend. I enjoyed myself. Adrienne didn’t warn us that those who had been schooling a while would be leading small groups – and we’ll have to give her a hard time about that, but it was all fun.

Now – I’m ready to draw the day to a close.

Our BIG Project for the Day

This was our big project for the day: getting Tapestry of Grace manuals into page protectors. I thought we may get all 4 years into protectors…but decided to leave year 1 in 5 2” notebooks for the time being and to leave Year 2 still tightly shrink wrapped in it’s SMALL box. Here you see the kids as they started the project, shortly before noon. Bre helped out of the goodness of her heart. She worked on year 4. She got the intro, unit one and unit two into protectors. Arielle completed unit 2. Nolan did about ½ of unit 3. Jared helped him finish. Jared slit all the protectors to allow the tabbed pages to fit inside. He did this for year 3 and 4. It took over 4 ½ hours. We decided to work on the rest later. This was much quicker than me trying to do both years alone. I paid the three children. They earned a penny a page and .15 for each tabbed page.

To think I thought I could fit it all in 2 3 inch notebooks. Here is all of year 3 in protected binders. Bre was impressed to see that each year plan has 12 years of school included in it. Maybe she was thinking I’ll pass it down to grandkids when I’m done…..

I’ve been trying to post this all day. Some days things simply don’t go as planned.

I awoke to discover that a cookie bandit had struck. You can’t really see the cookies well but this WAS full last night when I went to bed. This a.m. it was opened, ½ full, and there were two little cars parked next to cookie and brownie crumbs.

Nope – they don’t seem to feel to deprived with the rapadura and honey baking…..not if they still raid the cookie jar.

Krista, Mike and I went to the traditional service this a.m.

Krista and I zipped home right after service. Mike stayed to visit with a few folks who needed to talk to him.

I got many comments on my new dress – I’m starting to look the part I suppose. ::snort::: I still prefer the jeans and tanks that I wore to the contemporary service tonight! BTW I figured out that if I wear the tanks that are to low BACKWARDS they are classy and modest. LOL

When we got home I was totally impressed at what the other kids had accomplished in the hour we were gone. Salads were made, living room was picked up….I made hamburger patties, roasted some veggies and made a sauce for fruit salad…..

Steve and Debby and their two boys (Steven and Michael) came over for the afternoon. The adults had a good time “fellowshipping” while the boys and our older ones Bre – Jared played monopoly. The storm began during the afternoon and Jared and Krista ran out to play in the rain! LOL

Service was great tonight. Things are really, really gelling in the service and it is awesome. Now here’s a funny…..Mike has been wondering who to assign to the service for the time he is deployed. They had requested a man be sent here who could do the student service....and got a wonderful new chaplain. The thing that made assigning services so challenging, however, is that the new chaplain is an Episcopalian priest. I told Mike that we’d prayed and to wait and see. Would you believe that the new chaplain was formerly Church of God before becoming Episcopalian and is comfortable in contemporary? He is going to be just fine in the service for 6 months…God has such a sense of humor because Mike was raised Episcopalian and is now Pentecostal. :::snort:::

Background: We’ve had no rain in the month of August. We’ve had very little rain in July. Mike loves big thunder storms. He has been asking God to let him see rain before he deploys to the desert.

Today it rained. It poured all afternoon. The streets flooded. There was lightening and big gray clouds all around. There was rolling thunder. And God reminded Mike that He has Mike is His sight and that He has his back…He cares even for the little things….

Here Zander watches the rain storm from the porch.