Making spaghetti sauce....see the big stock pot? Anyway - a LOT of onions to cut up by hand....Jamin suggested goggles when the smell began to make all of THEIR eyes water...they were across the room....

Let's see since I'm here and this was such a hectic day, I'll quickly recap. Tomorrow will be even more hectic...I'm tired NOW thinking about it. I have 7 appointments tomorrow....WHY?

The a.m. was completely filled with school. We finished a couple of books and started some new ones. Since we had nothing 0n the calendar for the afternoon I had plans to: bake bread and buns, bake muffins, make spaghetti sauce, make granola and make salad dressings.

Jamin and Jared had been compiling a list of a few school things we needed. I KNEW if I didn't get them today we wouldn't have them until Friday. I thought I could run out and get all I needed....but I ended up having to go to three stores. The last store was a teaching store called The Learning Lane. I need to go back and spend more time there. I was looking for a lesson planner/daily log for Jamin. The one we get from NARHS didn't have enough subjects listed...I could NOT believe that no one had one of these. The Learning Lane had some for classroom use that I could adapt but then I saw a shelf of Apologia text books. I headed over and they had The Home School Planner.....The elementary one had more spots for subjects so I grabbed it for Jamin. I'm going to go online and see the "family" planner and "unit study" planner.....maybe.....I didn't get home until 5:45.....so we threw together burritoes for dinner. We didn't go on a walk. I made spaghetti sauce. Josiah got home from work, we all visited a bit and everyone but Zander and Stacia went down.

While making sauce I cut the same thumb, with the same knife, in the same spot....but not nearly as bad. That and the noxious onion fumes have finally almost convinced me to get the slicer/shredder attachment for the Bosch.

We did nothing exciting today - kept busy and do feel good about the day.

The kids plant seeds for Mike.... (ARielle took these photos - even then there was a better one but blogger won't take it. LOL )

CRUNCH....

Oh - I got a design back from geocaching nickels.....I think I'm going to like them when he is done. He's still tweaking things for me.



Now I really need to do some internet shopping and head to bed.....our Rosetta Stone disc is cracking. I guess I'll have to buy a new program. UGH

THREE WEEKS AND COUNTING

“Do we have any food coloring?” ARGH – what a question!!! Jared KNOWS our stance on artificial dyes. BUT he needed some food coloring for a science experiment. I laughed later in the day when Arielle and Nolan chose to make “candy crystals” and we need – you guessed it FOOD COLORING! Thus began our second day of schooling. Well not really – this was before I joined the kids. LOL

We began the day with working on a “family way” from “Our Family’s 24 Ways”. I LOVE this book and the approach. We’ve gone through it before but are working through it again with the younger ones….refreshing the older ones so that they can use it as a tool for training when we are not at home. Clay and Sally do a GREAT job of reaching a child’s heart with the WORD and PRINCIPLES vs. rules, rules, and rules. This is a proactive discipline tool in my opinion. I like it so well that last night I ordered 3 coloring books - they’ve updated the program since we bought the old flip chart version. This is not a homeschool only program.

We still can’t get our printer to work. My computer continues to close out of Outlook and the internet browsers with no warning. I really think it may be the wireless mouse and keyboard as it began doing this AFTER we attached those. The copy machine needs a printer toner (not a normal toner) and so I need to find the time to research a good spot to get such a thing.

School went well for all. Since we are doing 1900’s, I pulled out our American Girl Samantha craft book and cookbook and told Arielle and Nolan to pick one a week from each. I find out tomorrow what we’re doing. I KNOW we’ll be doing those candy crystal things because I agreed that was a FREE choice. I wonder if it will work with rapadura or if it HAS to be refined white sugar…..And we’ll have to make some without food color for Zander. LOL

Josiah and I went out to buy honey. I can’t believe how crippled I am without honey. I plan to bake tomorrow. We also went to the library and dropped off a bunch of books we are done with. I found a few new series that look really great to work in to this unit. I need to go back and get all the rest of the books for the unit but I can’t get the computer to print off the list. . . and I don’t want to rewrite 8 pages of Dewey numbers. :::Snort:::

We also stopped by HEB and bought some produce on sale…..I came home and got 10 lbs of strawberries into the freezer. I love them for smoothies. Though I’ve been using blueberries and they are wonderful! Thanks to Chris’ froggy, I’ve been leery of buying bagged salad but I need the convenience. I really AM visual. I’d HEARD about the risks of bagged salad but “SEEING is believing” around here. LOL I bought some more greens, chopped them all up, spun them all and then put the mixture in Ziplocs. We’ll see. I wanted to add the rest of the salad stuff but I haven’t had luck getting made up salad to last. Any suggestions? During all my kitchen time Zander came in and said, “MOM stole the cookie from the cookie jar”…this game expanded until he and I were yelling for others and the sounds were coming from all corners of the house. It doesn’t take much to amuse us.

I played croquet with Zander. He ASKED me to. Nolan and Arielle joined us for our second game.

Bible Study was tonight. Our group is really gelling. It was FUN. For any local women with base access, you are welcome to join us. Tuesday at 6:30. We try to be done with our discussion by 7:30 but some nights may go until 8:00. We are studying I John and it is RICH. Tonight we discussed life and fellowship…..both topics I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. We are “intergenerational” as we have 3 in their late 60’s and 3 in their 40’s….LOL A HOOT was when Mandy explained that whole “Hitchhiker in the galaxy” thing…..it’s an ENGLISH program. She grew up watching it. She’s from England. Their family loves it. I asked about the naked man but she’d never seen him. I told her I must have missed this program since I was in the Philippines during those years. {g}

I came home and got kids in bed. During the process I heard Zander say, “I LOOOOVE you Stacia!” Ah – great mommy moment. I need to do some more searching for a few more things I need to order…but I’m tired. I decided I’d best update the blog so my family does we are alive and well.

* Oh – the title….well you have to use some title but seriously it’s been 3 weeks since Mike has been gone. I miss you, hon. Josiah drove home today and jumped out to begin unloading. I sat there and sort of thought and then started tearing up….no one to open my door…..

Here’s a picture from our school day. Croquet was commonly played for recreation in the early 1900’s (before everyone began staying inside to watch TV). :::snort::: Anyway – we had a blast. Zander was a bit unpredictable to say the least. He kept taking MY ball and putting it back to the beginning….”Mom, you touched the tree you have to go back”. He had lots of new rules.

Mom – notice the tag? I decided to let him wear it inside out as long as he was clothed! LOL Now - it's 12:16 a.m. and I need to make a point of getting to bed before mid-night now that we are starting school bright and early. {G}

Monday with PURPOSE

Ah finally, a Monday with purpose. I lived on adrenaline all day. I hadn’t felt that churning, gotta keep multi-tasking, feeling in months…and it was sort of fun. :::snort::: I quickly quelled the panic.

We got far more school done than expected. I ordered more stuff and researched the more obscure credits that Jamin wants to work on.

Comedy of errors today: the disc that has Josiah’s finished work to be printed for last year’s portfolio won’t print. The computers say it needs to be formatted – but it worked 1 minute before that message. He had to redo a bunch of work. THEN the printer won’t print. This affected handouts I wanted to make for my small group and for Bible Study tomorrow. Ah well – it will save me some time. LOL Tonight the printer says the black ink cartridge is installed wrong – but it’s BEEN working fine since I changed it. Josiah lost his daily log book. We have to send this to NARHS…..we were sick. He eventually found it. The copy machine will NOT work.

Accomplishments: What a great day! I can say I got SOMETHING done. Not only school and ordering…BUT….I cleaned the back yard. I realized tomorrow was garbage day and I had 2 big cans that were empty. We threw out enough stuff to fill both of them, swept, washed, reorganized….now I’m ready for fall.

Mom’s Night Out tonight was fun. We didn’t get home until 10:00 p.m and that isn’t going to work well with Mike being gone. BUT I enjoyed my evening. It turned out that there was no one in my small group so I got to go to the one on devotions. I enjoyed hearing some new ideas….well really being reminded of some old ideas. LOL Oh – when Adrienne introduced me she said something about me having homeschooled for years, having 9 children, 2 graduated and “one on the way”. I said, “One WHAT? Mike’s deployed”. OK I cracked myself up at least. :::snort:::

A funny is that I spent lots of time last night and the last few weeks really trying to find the right curriculum for a credit in “culinary art”. I happened to check the “High School Course Description” book that NARHS sends out…they HAVE a two page course written up…..even a few texts that we could use. I think I will still look for a textbook – but it was nice to find the write up if I end up going that route. LOL

I have to share this GOD THING. I’m totally excited. I think it is a good thing. I’m trying to pull together the info for a credit for Jamin that will consist of editing and trying to get his book published. It’s not HARD to come up with enough for a credit…it’s the publishing thing that had me stumped. I mean he doesn’t want to self-publish…he wants it published. I entered the world of markets, agents and such. . . and promptly felt overwhelmed. Mike gave me some suggestions that we will work on. AT our MNO we have a table of freebies and a table of things for sale each month. I mentioned that if someone saw a book on publishing a book – I NEEDED it. At the end of the evening, the lady who I had commented to came up to me and pointed out a lady I didn’t recognize. She said that she was about to or had published a book. I went up to her and we visited. She is NOT from our town. She was in town and came to MNO. She is willing to email and share what she has learned with me. The GOD thing is that she told me about a group for Christian Writers. They pair new authors with established authors so the established authors can mentor the new author. They LOVE to have teens join. It costs…but it doesn’t seem to be more than music lessons…and this is HIS DREAM. I always tell them “it’s your dream, make it as big as you want it”….so I don’t want to come back and say, “Never mind “. I think it may be called the Christian Writer’s Guild or something. I don’t know if participation in that alone would be a credit according to NARHS but I’ll look into it. Is that God or what? Well worth getting home at 10:00 p.m.

We are all really excited to be back in school. I guess we’re funny that way.

SCHOOL DAZE

We have BEGUN! I thought I needed this week to mail of portfolios and plan…but after 15 years of homeschooling it really doesn’t take as much planning as it used to. I already had TOG Year 4. I know what workbooks they need. I frankly don’t think we NEED workbooks but the younger ones like to play in them and so I buy them. After last night’s ordering spree and library searching, I was fairly confident we could begin.

We did. We got through way more than I expected. We are studying the 20th Century this year.

Here is what the kids are doing (as of now). It’s all falling into place, though I have to really search to follow some of Jamin’s interests.

Zander
~Picture Book Activities: Fun and Games for Preschoolers Based on 50 Favorite Children’s Books
~Preschooler’s Busy Book: 365 Creative Games & Activities to Occupy 3 – 6 year old

Nolan
~ Speech Therapy – they’ve not called and I need to check into this.
~Math games, teaching concepts and fun pages, Family Math, living books, Critical Thinking Skills Math
~Finish Sing Spell Read and Write
~TOG
~Explode the Code
~Getty Dubay handwriting
~Finish Apologia Zoology

Arielle
~Math games, teaching concepts and fun pages, Family Math, living books, Critical Thinking Skills Math
~TOG
~Wordly Wise
~Explode the Code
~Spelling Workout
~Getty Dubay handwriting
~Apologia Zoology
~Red Herring, Fallacy Detective, Building Thinking Skills as we work in

Jared
~Saxon 8/7
~TOG (all core subjects and a few non-core)
~Wordly Wise 3000 – book 4
~Spelling Workout
~Easy Grammar Plus
~Apologia General Science
~Red Herring, Fallacy Detective, Building Thinking Skills as we work in
~Lots of handwriting practice this year
*Jared informs me he needs lots of science, math and English for the Academy
*Volunteering at House of Faith - Community Service

Jamin
~TOG (US History, Church History/Worldview, Fine Arts, Lit, Composition, Vocab)
~Foundations of Personal Fitness
~Culinary Art
~Writing to be Published
~PE
~Alg 2 a (1st half)
~Logic I (1st half of Mars Hill)
~Spanish 2
~Global Communications or some such title (GPS)
~Plan to run older boys through Dave Ramseys 7 week class on personal finances and then have them to a budget, check book etc….I may work this up into ½ a personal math credit or we may do it for fun.
*Volunteering at House of Faith - Community Service

Josiah
Had all credits needed after Sophomore year. He wants to do a few more things this year.
~TOG 4
~SAT PREP (not for credit just for practice)
~Plan to run older boys through Dave Ramsey’s 7 week class on personal finances and then have them to a budget, check book etc…. I may work this up into ½ a personal math credit or we may do it for fun.

*Josiah is working as many hours as possible. He has a financial plan that he is working towards. He wants to have enough saved up for a good car and a year of college by the end of this year. See what listenting to Dave Ramsey will do to you? :::snort:::

Redeeming the Hour

It is after mid-night but I have finished! I ordered all videos for the first 9 weeks of school from Netflix. I made a list of all the library books for the first 9 weeks. I ordered quite a few of the spine books that I need for the first 9 weeks.

NOW - I'm feeling better prepared for school to start. I'm going to bed and praying I wake up to school before noon. LOL