Meine Kinder

Drama

2010-05-30T05:35:00.003-06:00

Do you have one of those Drama Queen's in you life? I do have one of those, and every time it makes me thankful to have a boring old life thank you very much. Unfortunately life has a funny way of thinking you may need other things. Thus I ended up being the drama queen.

Life has gotten the better of me again. Hubs had to have another amputation. This time his lower left leg. Leading up to this though hasn't been fun and he has been in tremendous pain. As crazy as it sounds it was the best possible thing we could have done and he is doing really well. My emotions have been running high for some time anyway with all the changes we have had over the past few years. I did fine for the longest and then it just seemed to catch up to me.

A nagging thought kept occurring to me that made drama more susceptible. "why do I always have to bite my tongue or be the better person"? Sometimes, and at this time, I feel like just saying exactly what I mean. Of course it gets me in trouble. I guess I am just going through the steps, this one anger?

Ever since hubs had been having problems I have been on the search....Why?....Why us?
But if not us it would have to be someone right? Then the search turned to the plan. I tried to make that deal," Ok, God, just show me the plan or at least the next step and i will do it and everything will be ok right?" yeah that doesn't work so much either.

Recently I had the opportunity to go to my first ever Christian Conference and Concert. Yeah! I know!!! I live under a rock. Conferences and concerts just haven't been a high priority. Anyway! Women of Joy was just what I needed before the storm of the amputation. And I let go of the idea of seeing, knowing, understanding the plan or the next step. A light bulb went on, "that is faith, duh". There were so many inspirational speakers at this conference that touched me in different ways. I guarantee I will make a point to do them in the future, what an uplifting experience.

I needed to go beyond just going to church. I need that one on one. I had it once and lost sight of it through this crazy ride called life. I have my sights set back on it. It may not always be fun but I think I may not loose sight this time, I pray!!

Thank you to my kind friend for sending me

Isaiah 35:3-4

Strengthen the weak hands,
and make firm the feeble knees.
Say to those who are of a fearful heart,
"Be strong, do not Fear!.......

It was just what I needed the day of surgery. I still think of how powerful this verse is. Thank you God for putting , my friend, in my life to give me these words . Just what I needed and didn't even know it, thank you for knowing it for me!

What are some of your favorite verses to go to in a very tough time?

Thinking it through

2010-04-17T17:49:00.007-06:00

It is getting closer as we head into warmer weather school is coming to a close and I am trying to make sure they get them all done. I know I said it before but we will never do K-12. It's not for us. I am trying to decide what to do for the next year as Austin has expressed that he wants to go back to ps. He seems to think I am trying to put him in a bubble and protect him. Of course that is what I am doing but not the way he thinks. I am sure I am not the first hs mom with a teen that wants to go to ps. Since he has been before I feel it is a loosing battle, but why do I feel this need to give in? I know that this year has been horrible between moving and trying one school then switching. Could it be possible that I too am not the only one to have a trying year and only see the road leading one way. What if I do send him back? I survived right? yeah but I now see that is all I did. I didn't really retain any of it and had to relearn it in College. I hated school and dropped out. Now that I have been/am hs'ing for 4 years we have come into some of the most brilliant learning enviroments ever. Plus they are not being molded into the cookie cutter, they are able to develop their self. I enjoy watching them evolve on their own, not on their best friends time table.I am discontent and unsure of how to proceed. Austin says he hates hs. It saddens me every time he says it. Always in a joking manner, with intent. As I push he pulls and that needs to be fixed. Every time I have ever done anything hs oriented he ended up having a blast even if he didn't start that way. If he does stay hs how do I bring him around? I sure can't do it here (the boonies, sc)as he has no hs peers. I simply must figure this out and get a plan of action going to ensure that there is a working plan come "school" year.

Colin has also expressed interest in going back. With him I think he would be fine either way, so chances are he will hs next year. Conner has stated that he wants to hs next year. Last year we did CBS, Karate, Ice skating and various other activities with hs groups and it was great. The kids had a wonderful array of hs peers. This gave me a look at high school too as alot of those students were in this category. I simply loved these kids attitude towards their peers (kids of all ages) and to adults. I am not suggesting these kids are perfect just saying I see a clear difference in the attitude of these kids vs. kids from ps (that I have met or observed). For our family that is what I would love to see is the attitude of those hs'ing kids influencing my kids. I want them to find interesting ways to learn instead of boring lectures. Can I still do that in ps? I could to an extent. I have observed Austin in ps and I have seen him with his peers from ps and his peers from hs groups. The attitude I see in him toward myself, other adults and his peers is almost night and day and that is what I fear will be if he does go back to ps. Perhaps I should figure out how to help him act his normal self when being influence to act this way. How do I do that?

I need instruction. I need to figure out what is best for each of the kids, but haven't the foggiest on how to do that . Well I think I got Colin and Conner figured out but not Austin. How do you approach bigger decisions for the kids like that? We aren't talking about letting them have a soda, this is school and bigger even then that it is the shaping of my kids. I wish I knew the right answers. How is it that the older I get I feel more confused then ever? Alright, I have bored you with my crazy thoughts enough. I hope I got it all right as my thought jumble.

16

2010-03-13T17:16:00.003-07:00

The amount of years I put up with my hubs will be 16 on the 16th. I can't believe that it has been that long since we met in our high school library. He was all the trouble I could handle and it took him three weeks to convince me. But really that smile got me every time and still does. We have definitely had our share of ups and downs all these years, but it has so far been a good journey. I think of all our memories and find although we had a bit of a rocky start we managed to work through it and came out on top. We are not the same people we were when we started, but come on we were 17. I also think to the future and hope we can continue to compromise any issues that come along the way. I love that pain in the neck man that drives me crazy as only he knows how..........Happy 16th Anniversary

2010-03-02T18:03:00.008-07:00

My mystery flower turns out to be daffodils

We are putting in a fence in the back. This will be a wonderful place for the dogs. Not to mention that we have had to take them out on leashes for about 2 1/2 yrs now. Well actually mostly the kids do it, but it is wearing everyone out and this will definetly make our lives so much easier. We are putting a chain link fence up since I think it silly to go with a privacy fence. I am not the biggest fan of chain link but I must say as the project is developing I am enjoying having a perimeter for the yard. It seems more managable to just have a backyard and frontyard and not really mess with the side yards for the most part. The boys have been helping with the project and it is interesting getting everyone to work together. I got out there and finished raking most of the gutters along the driveway only to find that perhaps it may have been easier to burn it. I even managed to till up the garden a bit and plant some onions, garlic, blueberry and rasberry. I still have a host of herbs and asperagus that I need to get in the ground. The asperagus is a bit daunting but I am excited about it at the same time. I am still planting and will continue to, hopefully I will have some pic's up soon.

I have also been trying to identify the birds that come to visit. Thus far I have what appears to be....

Robin(american robin)

Small woodpecker/possibly sapsucker

~still working on a good picture of this guy

Big woodpecker(pileated woodpecker?)

It's hard to tell but this woodpecker has a pecan in his beak.

small finch like brown bird

Still working on identifying this one, he's so small
He has a red cap with white eyebrow and black moustache.

The boys are even getting into it by telling me my woodpecker is back or a red cardinal is visiting. We are researching bird identification (or related) websites. It was fun to see what to look for as we start birding. I am even trying to keep a record of my visitors. I will inlist the boys help and have them build birdhouses for the different birds that are visiting and of course the ones we would like to visit. Isn't science fun. I even found a conservation project we can participate in to attract a certain hummingbird, more on this later. My favorite websites for birding thus far are

~ enature.com

~ birding.com

If there are sites you like to go to let me know. Enjoy your week.

Let it Snow

2010-02-21T18:20:00.004-07:00

The backyard and fields covered in snow

Isn't it comical or perhaps a bit celestial that the year we move to South Carolina they break their 20 year no snow streak? It would seem we are responsible for about 6 inches of snow that hit last week. Yes of course i took pictures. I figured it was probably the first pictures of the farm with snow. It was pretty and white for all of one day. Half way through the roads were clear. I can tell you that doesn't happen in Colorado.

I bet it will never look the same

We got some inches

Austin and Colin went with the youth group on a skiing trip. Neither have ever gone skiing, although Austin has snowboarded. They left on Friday and by the time they finally arrived, 11:45 pm mind you, we had snow well on the scene. Conner was so excited since we really missed our snow season this year. Christmas was not the same. He also was unable to go because of his age. We bundled up and went outside. Chris pumped up a snow tube we had and roped it to the 4 wheeler. WE invited Marsha and her son and his wife. Conner got to go around a couple of times but of course my camera was dead. It was funny to see locals reaction to the snow. They were simply dumbfounded and awed. Snow Angels were made. Tracks in the snow for fun and of course what winter day would be complete without a snow man? Again I am sad to say by this time my camera was 6 ft under.

The boys came back on Sunday and Colin even bought me a magnet. What a thoughtful little kid. I love collecting magnets with pictures of the places we have been. I let him designate where on the fridge it would go. Now he has a reminder all the time. After getting some rest the boys talked non stop about this slope and that slope and what they ate and who they hung out with. It was good to see them so hyped up. They had great fellowship. I must say I am really pleased with the youth director at the church we have been attending. She is so easy going and relates to all ages so well. I still miss our church in the springs, but this church will do nicely.

I got a great deal on a Cricut recently but it really does take some playing with it to get the feeling of how it all works. I am still working out the kinks but I definitely have a much better understanding of that machine thanks to my niece. She sent me this cute little bookmark and so I thought I would return the favor and made one for her and one for her sister. I think they turned out rather cute and I can't wait to know whether the girls like them. It was really nice to be able to use some of my more feminine scrapbook stuff. I had such a fun time playing with the machine and figuring out what it can do and all that. I came up with so many extras that I sent to the girls figuring they would have fun gluing them all around.

I just adore this textured paper. It has such a wonderful dimension. I played with some puff paint and it didn't turn out so well. I love the odd heart as opposed to a perfect one.

this is where I love the cricut I could never have cut those hearts so thin and perfect. I also had some fun odds and ends around that I managed to implement. I hope she likes it.

This is the bookmark and I am sorry you can't tell very well that is still textured paper. The flowers came out so wonderful.

I've had this paper for a long time but because I have all boys I have not had a need for it. this was perfect way to utilize it and I am amazed at how perfectly the cutout flowers from the cricut match the dimensional flowers on the paper.

What projects are you all working on?

20 Year old bulbs?

2010-02-08T09:45:00.006-07:00

I love flowers, but not in the typical buy me a dozen roses fashion; yet rather in the rose bush. I mean, don't get me wrong I do love getting flowers from my hubs but really it is the fact he thought of me. Flowers last about a week, two tops, if you know how to take care of them. A rose bush will last year in and out, as you watch it grow. Gardening is definitely something I like doing and I do know a bit about (just more then average). I moved from zone 5 to zone 8b. That means I get much more selection in the type of plants I want to grow. There are some plants that would not do well with in Colorado that will do very nicely here. We worked on getting a walkway of sorts out in front and have been noticing plants around the yard for some time. I thought they were wild as they seemed to appear everywhere with no rime or reason. We took out the old brick walkway that led up to the old house since now it didn't lead to the front door. Much to my surprise ,we saw more flowers start to appear in what seemed to flank the old walkway. This couldn't be, could it? No one has lived here for 20 years. Yes, some hunters came here but I am sure they did no gardening. So could this really be Chris's Grandmothers flowers? That would mean those bulbs replanted themselves for 20 years. Chris does say that there were many more flowers when his Grandmother lived here. With this in mind I find it really neat that they have survived and now I get to dig them out and transplant them in areas that make sense. I kind of like the idea of heirloom plants even if they aren't by definitions heirloom plants. I think it's a small tribute to her, to reuse these flowers. Here are some pics around the place

This poor tree has been pretty much eaten up by termites, it will need to come down. But it looks really cool.

These flowers came out in back. Apparently there used to be an outhouse that had a path to it with flowers all around. I can't wait to see actual flowers on them so I can identify them.

This picture didn't come out great so I drew on it to show you where the walkway was and where all the bulbs are showing up. That says walkway in the middle and the circles are the bulbs. Don't you think they look like they flank the walkway. Wouldn't it be neat if they were Chris's Grandmother's flowers. What a neat way to pay

All the rain we have been having showed me that I didn't get all the bricks from the old walkway.

Superbowl or really sports in general are not a huge thing in my house. We did love doing it with my Grandparents but really we just loved hanging with them. In the spirit, Chris and I cooked food and had the game on. Colin made a copy cat KFC coleslaw recipe. He was so cute dicing all that cabbage. I ended up helping since he had to do a whole head of cabbage. Chris made chili and hot wings. I made stuffed jalapenos, football shaped peanut butter chocolate rice krispies and Liquid center chocolate torte. I had always seen them and thought "no, that looks too hard". Then my boys stumbled upon "The worst cooks in America" on Food Network. Oh my goodness, we were hooked. Anyway these cooks made the chocolate torte so I thought it can't be that hard then. You know what it really wasn't, if you have wanted to try this go for it. I used the recipe that they used on the show. It was a chocolate heaven. I am definitely making them again.

Colin dicing up some cabbage. He pays alot of attention to the food network. Notice he has his palm on the knife to hold it in place. He got pretty good after a while. It was fun. Oh and the recipe did taste just like the KFC original. Yummmm

Liquid Center Chocolate torte. OOoey gooey chocolatey center with a light fluffy yet very rich chocolate outside. Simply a chocolate lovers delight.

Stuffed Jalapeno peppers turned out very good. It was a bit of work and taking that into consideration I am not sure we will make them again. If a recipe is alot of work it better be worth it, you know what I mean.

Chocolate peanut butter football shaped rice krispie treats. I forgot to get the icing and barely managed a picture before little fingers were grabbing them up not caring about the icing. At least they liked them

The copy cat coleslaw tasted just like the real thing, definitely a keeper recipe.

I am so ready for spring . I really am looking forward to finding out what all these bulbs are around here. We are in the yard all the time and people will be planting soon. I hope to have a vege garden and continue to get the yard in shape. Are you guy's ready for spring?

Neglect

2010-02-02T14:20:00.003-07:00

It seems as if my blog has taken a huge hit the past year. I have not really neglected keeping it updated. I apologize. I almost was tempted to ditch the whole thing but I really do like it plus it can let my family back home know what we are up to. So I am going to be making sure to post at least weekly(cross your fingers).

Christmas came and went as did the new year. Do you call it twenty-ten or two thousand and ten? Dh's Uncle passed away in January. He had cancer of the esophagus. We all knew it was coming but it was still hard. Then to top it off his dad went into ICU a week ago. It seems we are not off to a good start for the year.We seem to have found a church home but haven't made it official with the church. It is definitely not what we are used to but it is a good little church with many wonderful hearts and great christian role models. The boys have enjoyed ice skating with them and a "lock down" on New Years Eve. Austin and Colin just signed up to go skiing in February at Seven Devils in North Carolina. I hope they cooperate when I ask for a couple of nice pic's together.

I am unsure if I have mentioned this but I am originally from Germany. Thus why my blog name is in German. Anyway I am still a permanent resident and I have come to the decision before my green card expires (every ten years)I am going to take the citizenship test. I have lived in this country much longer and really don't anticipate me moving to Germany. I hope you will enjoy the posts that will involve this as I am involving our hs of course. It should prove to be quite entertaining. I have also been doing a bit of cleaning and painting. We got an old wardrobe that was dirty and stinky. A good cleaning and a shiny new coat of paint and I can't wait to show you all the pic's. We are continuing to clean up in the yard and reclaiming it. The boys have been cutting down alot of undergrowth and trees. I love trees but really we had way too many. We also seem to continue to have drainage issues. It has been raining almost non stop. It doesn't even seem to stop long enough for the water to absorb into the ground. We get anywhere from 4-8 inches. I have a rain gage outside. After it rains we cannot use either the sliding door from the living room or the back door from the laundry room. Unless of course we want to hit the "pond" as we have "lovingly" termed the pool of water that insists on collecting in our backyard. Check out these.

This is at the bottom of the living room stairs. This pot just floated from somewhere and the wheelbarrow the boys used to haul wood to this door for the fireplace.

This is sort of a weird angle from the living room door looking towards the laundry room door. I don't know why the litterbox was there as I had it moved to the barn.

I sure hope your guys' new year is turning out to be a good one. I have missed all of you so much so I can't wait to see ya'll back here.

Notes and such

2009-11-30T06:57:00.009-07:00

Thanksgiving went better then I expected. The food turned out great and the table looked good. We enjoyed our meal and had a good day. At the end I counted my blessings for the things that went well. I suppose that is all that anyone can really expect. Colin and Conner both helped with various things and of course Colin made at least one dish, green bean casserole. Austin "helped" by asking when the food would be done, lol. Austin is not one for the kitchen. I suppose I need to relax a bit and enjoy things and not worry so much about whether it compares to whomever I am comparing myself to at the moment. I am always looking to improve.

So I took time out to put the new recipe's we tried and liked. I really like the red garlic mashed potatoes and the savory stuffing. The pumpkin cake was so great and is also a wonderful addition. The turkey came out so beautiful, I wish I had gotten a picture when it came out of the oven. Everyone agreed it was too salty but it was gone in no time so it must not have been that bad. The brine recipe that I used called for 1 cup of water to 4 gallons of water. I found some turkey sized roasting bags at the grocery store so we put the turkey in it and added water till it was just about covered but we still had plenty of plastic left to tie off. Then we let it marinate for two days. I am going to change it to one day and 3/4 cup of salt in a roaster bag full of water. I hope this will be the wining recipe for christmas. I typed all this up into my "master chef" software. I love this software. I even got my sister to love it. It keeps all my recipe's. At the time I was thinking back to a time I remember seeing my grammy do this. Of course she did it with paper and pencil. She always put notes in her recipe's to get them just right. You know that little hint to make the recipe taste just so. We even talked about the amount of egg in her rum cake and how she has tried a few different ones to find one that worked. I've never really done this till now and I can see how invaluable this minor thing can be for adjusting my recipes for the better. Of course that doesn't work when you aren't sure where you went wrong. I am not sure where I went wrong with the pecan pie but no one wanted to eat it. The crust was great and the pecans were good we picked them ourselves from all those pecan trees in the yard. The filling was ok but it wasn't right it had this sort of odd taste not like I used bad ingredients but like mabey something got put in there that shouldn't. I have always had problems with this pie and I am on a mission to get the thing right. It's all in the practice right?

On Thanksgiving we went to Marsha's, her mom is my husbands great Aunt Dottie. That would make her....?It was a decent crowd with lot's of family showing up throughout the day. Even though I don't know half of them. There was so much food I felt silly for worrying about what I was bringing-green bean casserole, candied yams and pumpkin cake. The food over there was good too although they sure don't make yams like my grammy. Later the boys along with the teenagers and Marsha's grown boys played football. I got a few good snaps and will try to post them soon. The boys really had a good time and I was sooo glad. Here a few shots of our Thanksgiving.

This is the pumpkin cake. It's a new recipe and it was so delicious. Like pumpkin bread in a cake. nice and moist.

Pumpkin pie. Looks good. I am getting better at the crust aesthetics's

Green bean casserole and garlic red mashed potatoes. The potatoes were the creamiest I have ever had. Yummo. There are some crescents and the stuffing in the back

Grammy's candied yams, and savory stuffing in front. Mac and cheese in back.
Ham and Turkey. It's funny because at first I thought I did get a pic of the turkey. Upon closer inspection though I see that my hubs carved the turkey and placed it so, it looks like the whole thing.

Planning Thanksiving

2009-11-22T15:48:00.004-07:00

I took time out Friday to plan our Thanksgiving menu. In a way I like the planning and thought process that goes into doing the whole holiday thing but I sure miss the simplicity of going to my Grammy's. Let me tell you about the holiday's at my Grandparents house. I have been going to my grandparents house since I came to the USA back in 86. We took a three year break when we were stationed in Florida. My Grandparents have perfected the art of the holiday meal. Everything is special and we always know what to expect although we do have alterations and of course the regular surprise thrown in. I cannot fathom the holidays without all of that but I must work with what I got. And so it would seem that I can either sit around pouting(boy I sure have gotten good at that one the past few months) or I can try and make myself busy being productive. I know at the end of the day if I feel I have gotten alot accomplished I can sleep ever so much better. So even if it will be different I will be making familiar dishes. I have also thrown in a few new ones I want to try out. I mean if I am going to start our own family traditions I want to have some recipes of my own. So what am I making? Here is the menu

Turkey

Ham

A somewhat modified version of my Grampy's Giblet Gravy

Grammy's Ham Glaze

Savory stuffing

Garlic Red mashed potatoes

Grammy's Candied Yams

Green Bean Casserole

Black Eyed Peas

Salad

Crescents

Pecan Pie

Cranberry Sauce

Pumpkin Cake

Yuppers it's a dozy but my Grandparents make way more then that and it's all so yummy. Sunday we talked about that at Marsha's (cousin to Chris I think). It was mentioned that my grandparents success at holiday meals comes from years of practice. I know this must be true so I have adjusted my thinking to expect much less so that hopefully I will be pleasantly surprised. I will get another opportunity to practice at Christmas time. Let's not get ahead of ourselves here though so back to thanksgiving. I had the defrosted my turkey this past weekend and then let it marinate in brine for two days. This morning I put it in my oven and should be ready around 3-5 pm tonight. We made the stuffing as we stuffed the bird so it would come out nice and juicy. Colin put together the Candied yams and Conner and I will be making the pecan pie in a bit. I also want to get the Pumpkin Cake done today. The ham I got was an already done type so I will just carve it tomorrow and then heat it up.What does that leave? The mashed potatoes, mac n cheese, green bean casserole, both gravies which I need drippings for before making, the black eyed peas are already done and salad and cranberry sauce is the ready to serve type. Last is the rolls but the will go in 20-30 min. before Dinner time.

I had a great time learning about turkey brining and preparing and roasting yesterday. The Internet is a wonderful tool if you know how to use it. I even watched videos on prepping and carving. I also got the tablescape and I hope it will be wonderful. I will try to take pic's for you guys. Be sure to share your menu, I love trying recipes.

Low Country Tour

2009-11-17T06:13:00.010-07:00

I know I have been promising those pic's of where we now live forever. Well here are a few shots around the house. Please remember that no one has live here since 89', which means no one has done anything around here other then nature reclaiming. That is 20 yrs that no one has weeded, raked leaves, mowed the yard, trimmed trees etc.... My FIL came here at least every other year if not every to do maintenance on the buildings. The house burned down several years ago, I will find a picture of it for you guys if you promise not to laugh, I'm all of 17 in those pictures LOL. Watch for it in a future post.

Here is our Barn. As you can see the stairs are gone and there are some temporary steps which we are going to fix sometime. The field on the left of this building is our possible Garden site.

This is where we house wood and all the animal feed. Not sure what the building was used for but it is in the best condition out of all of them.

Our driveway. It needs desprate leveling and some general cleanup. On the very far left is the grapevine growing by the "garage".

The kitchen clean. I had to take a picture so I would remember what that looks like, lol. Kidding. I could put some chairs around the island. I am considering this for more seating.

Here is a a view from an angle at the front of the house. See the bare landscape, not to mention the years of growth we need to clean up.

Here are some bricks I got from the piles in our backyard. These used to make up all three chimney's on the old house

Our fine chickens produced these, aren't they wonderful.

Our pig. We just put fencing around this pen. The pig is having a blast rooting the place out.

This is the backyard coming from the front yard. There are two huge piles where we had them put as much of the wood in one and as much of the brick in the other. All that was left of the old house that burned down several years ago.

This is our "garage", it works even if that was not it's original intent. There is a grapevine next to the building that has been so overgrown I'm afraid of killing it if I try to cut it back.

My wonderful chickens in their pen. This pen needs work but the chickens are safe so it will do. I let the chickens free range as much as possible as this makes for happy birds. They thank me with almost enough eggs for all of us. I have never had a fresher egg.

That is our tour for the day. I am off to do some yard work and to work on my Thanksgiving menu and grocery list. I will try to write later. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend.

A switch and project

2009-11-04T07:07:00.004-07:00

Well things have been a bit stressful around here and hubs is just about fed up. Actually let me take that back, hubs is fed up. He is in process of switching the boys to K-12. Yup you read right we are going back to K-12. We know the system and how it works. The teachers have always been so accomadating. Anyway it will be so much easier for him to work with and I still get my boys in hs. Dh wants to send Austin to ps in the second semester. Austin has been expressive about his dislike of hs the entire time. To be honest he has worn me out but that is no excuse to put him in that enviorment. I think that by giving in and giving him that type of influence that he will just get worse. I will pray, as a matter of fact I need to do that here in a few.

Chris and I came out of the ps system. We came out alright but we sure had that time that the influence of our peers made our pre-teen through teenage years quite rough on our parents not to speak of our values. I also don't like the skewed representation of History and Science due to taking God out of our schools. I do not suggest I want to keep them in a bubble but I want to equip them with the neccesary skills so that when they do come upon a time they should need such skills that they will be there.

I will keep you guys posted

Lowcountry Tour

2009-10-23T19:12:00.014-06:00

Down here they have a term for the area, Lowcountry. It's sort of whimiscal. Anyway I have been coming back to the blogging world and found some good ideas for my blog. With that said I am attempting to come up with topic's so my family and all my wonderful friends can find things easier. I hope anyway. I also thought with trying to get some pic's of our new "home" that it would be great to give you all a tour of where we live. I will call it "Lowcountry Tour". I hope it will help my family back home see all we are up to. It will also give you a great view into our lives.

We will start the tour with the new house. This particular one will host the trail on the back fields. you can see how outgrwon things have gotten. It takes us about 20 min. to walk it. I have yet to get out there with a pedometer to figure out the milage for my workouts. We have been training the puppies to walk with us using this trail. They are in some of the pic's.

Deer tracks, I think this one is a Fawn and her mom. These are all over the trail behind the house.

This is looking towards the house somewhere in the middle of the field

A Deer stand put there by the Hunters club that used to rent the land for that purpose

This is towards the back field. Austin is ahead walking Kenai on a leash while the little puppies follow

This is towards the right field. Great shot of the pups with Kenai

Next time I will be showing the grounds and house. See ya'll later. (lol)

Connections Academy

2009-10-19T06:27:00.002-06:00

OH what can I say that would be nice?? Well they sent us the curriculum in record time. They have been very friendly and their teachers are too. But the website is not user friendly. Sometimes the boys have a hard time getting videos or assignments to pop up. And it's not my pop up blocker I assure you. This leads to the discussion my husband and I had about just purchasing a curriculum. I know he doesn't feel comfortable to put it all together by himself so to rely on a ready made one would be the best way for homeschool to work in our home this year. I know it is very late in the year to be talking about getting a curriculum but I have tried to stick with Connections Academy only to find myself aggravated at their site every time I go there. In the meantime I will try and quickly find all the things the boys will need and the boys will have to endure Connections Academy for the time being. That being said I think we are in for a bumpy ride but we will make it through.

When I have the stuff together I will post the boy's curriculum and a schedule of sorts that will enable them to finish the year "on time".

Mist

2009-10-10T06:28:00.003-06:00

I must share this wonderful thing that happens in the morning. Most mornings I have gotten up to a mist covering the field behind the house. It is very magical. It also makes morning walks with the puppies a bit hard because they get wet and then cold. Speaking of the puppies they are doing really well with our training them to follow us around. We are still working on potty training though.

The boys have caught two raccoons within days of each other. The last one was in a trap in the back fields. It looked so scared and innocent I felt so awful when my boys were talking about killing it. I know people around here like hunting and all but I don't think I will ever like it. I like my meat in packages thank you very much. Apparently these creature , like the armadillo's, are a nuisance to the farm. I have heard bad stories about raccoons and chickens. Oh speaking of chickens our chickens are starting to lay eggs. We got our first egg yesterday morning. I was so overjoyed as we have had them over a month and were wondering if we were doing something wrong. I am still looking for a good movable pen for the chickens so I can get them to clean up some of the yard.

Chris went back home(Colorado springs) to get his truck. I miss him terribly and am very worried as the weather there has been in the 30's and was supposed to be getting much worse today. This prompted him to leave early, so he wants to get out of there sometime this morning. Yeah. I had him bring the camera because as crazy as it sounds I wanted some pic's of home. For some reason I never took pictures of the town we lived in for so long and the town I think of as home. I can't wait to see what he got. With him gone today will be especially crazy. Conner has a game at 10:30. Them Austin and Colin have pictures at 12:30 and their game at 1:30. I still need to make a couple of dishes for Sunday dinner with the extended family. I am trying to decide between goulash and schnitzel. Colin wants a green bean casserole. I also want to make a desert.

Our work with connections academy is keeping me on my toes. It is just not a user friendly site. They need major work in that area. Unfortunately our Internet connection is also part of that problem. Hughes Net is not what it says it is . It is very slow and truly not much faster then dial up. We keep getting timed out and alot of things don't show up that the boys need to read in order to do the assignments and it is causing alot of frustration. I have some ideas about how to fix this problem. I will share them at a later date if it comes to fruition. On this note if you have a great christian curriculum that you love tell me about it please.

2009-09-10T07:00:00.003-06:00

I can't believe it has been almost a month since I the last post. I'm so sorry for keeping you all out of the loop but things have been just cuh-razy. We had to wait a week and a half for our movers along with a home phone. We are discovering people around here don't seem to move quite as quickly as I am used to. LOL. It has been frustrating but we finally have everything. I am still unpacking but I got most of the things where they need to be now its down to organizing. We have had a steady crop of people stopping by and that has been nice although it has ruined some nice plans we have had on occasion.

I have been lost in trying to get the house the way I want it and it has been just about the only thing on my mind. The boys are getting situated as well. We got a four wheeler that they have been having a blast with but it will definitely be very helpful around here. We also got a riding lawnmower as our yard is now much bigger then before. There were several bigger branches in the yard we had to cut up but are going to come in handy for firewood. Also the old house was put into two piles out behind the house. One is as much of the wood and the other as much of the bricks as possible. That has been interesting. I was surprised to see how easily the mortar (sp?) came off of most of the bricks from the old fireplace's of the old house that had burned down. I don't know if it was because the house had been about a hundred years old or if the fire that burned it down just has that affect on mortar but it sure has made my job easier to get the bricks sorted. I want to use them for something since they are going to be the only thing remaining of the old house. There are vines all over the ground that I hope will start going away as we cut and live here. The boys also saw and shot their first armadillo. I had no idea how fast those things can move. I know everyone here says they are a pest but I would love to find out more about them, mostly we were told they would dig holes around the yard and in our outbuildings essentially creating a lovely way to brake your ankle. Needless to say we don't need that.

I haven't managed to get out all that much because of all that has been going on. Also Dh's condition has him tired and in alot of pain which has also had us miss out on some things. But it is the way our life has been for some time so we are used to it. Other then obviously being concerned for dh I find myself apologizing alot for things we have missed. I also found that unless you have dealt with chronic illness people either don't understand and look at us as if we are making it up or they make Dh feel like he is completely incompetent. Other than that I have officially signed the kids up for Connections Academy (public virtual school) since dh will be taking over most of the schooling. Austin is still requesting ps and dh and I are considering it for high school. I hope the boys get their stuff soon so we can start. Once that is done I am sure things will be getting into the swing of things.

I am also trying to take some pic's for you guys so you can see our new digs. I can't wait to share. Please update me on what's been up with you guys. I can't wait to check your blogs and see what you all have been up to. Hopefully I will start to have more time for my blogging soon. Have a great week everyone.

Got him

2009-08-13T08:21:00.004-06:00

Thought I would let ya'll know that we found kenai, some really nice people took care of him for the night. We are grasping at straws for what else to pack. So we just need to get all the stuff we need for the trip and load up the car. Other then that I will be up to my elbows in hot sudsy water-in my opinion still the best enviormentally friendly cleaner with a bit of old fashioned elbow grease. The movers will be here in a few hours. I must run again.

Have a good day.

A quick note

2009-08-11T05:03:00.003-06:00

The boxes are packed and we are down to the nitty gritty. The movers are on their way. There is so much to do . I know I haven't posted much latley but it looks as if I may need to take a quick break. I won't have internet for a little bit. I'm not sure when but since we are moving to the sticks the only way I could get high speed internet was to go with Hughes Net. And they are not cheap.

I think Chris's cousin has some chickens for us. We have to put up fences since those are long gone, then we can get a cow. Chris and the boys plan on doing some deer hunting on our property. The land has been rented out to hunters for years. So I guess there must be some there. I have as of yet to see all of the property. I am super terrified. The what if's are dancing around me in circles. I will be on the hunt for a job, I will attempt to make sure we still won't have to file bankruptcy. The past year has not been pretty to my bank account. All those copay's add up quick and when you have to see that many specialist (higher copay)it gets a bit crazy. Other then that I need to learn as much as I can about being farmer jane. LOL> Oh yeah that's my new nickname, lol. I wonder who all will show and how it all will turn out. I keep hearing that there may be quite a few people there when we finally appear. I will be sure to update.

So know that for the next week or two I am packing, moving, driving to our new home, unpacking, job hunting and a slew of goodness knows what else. We are going to have our husky, two dachshund's, one cat, Austin's bird, Colin and Conner's turtle (its itty bitty and we brought it up here from our trip to south Carolina so really we are just bringing him home). We will have us and our three boys and all the basic necessities for about a week and a half. That is alot for one mini van. We have a top thing (name is escaping me).

Tuesday we went to say goodbye to my grandparents. They are taking care of my nephew who happens to be the same age as Colin and the boys and him get along fabulously. My grandpy cooked out on the grill. It was a great meal and I tried hard not to think that this was the last time I would see them for a while. I know we can't come here for the holiday's this year as we will just have moved. So it is going to be extremely difficult for me and the boys. We had a good time and I of course took pictures. Grandmy fixed up a plate to take back with me to Chris, who had stayed behind to pack. My in-laws had been helping us pack up that day. The boys and I felt pretty guilty rolling into the house at 9 ish at night knowing full well we weren't getting much accomplished that evening. Chris had bad news, Kenai got loose . We are desperately trying to find him. We are leaving on Friday and I don't intend to leave without that dog. The boys are very upset and I am so scared for him as he needs medication (he has epilepsy).

Half the house is packed. Colin got his haircute ,ahem I mean haircut. I hated cutting all those curls off but he really needed it. You should have seen all the hair under his chair. The hairdresser even mentioned it. He has pretty much the haircut he used to have before he started growing it out. He looks very nice, he lucked out with fabulous hair that seems to look great no matter what length. I dropped off two of my cats with my mom to watch for us till October when Chris will come back and drive his truck down to South Carolina. We have said our goodbyes to just about everyone. My mom is coming over today or tomorrow for coffee and goodbye. I am trying not to be sad, I know I will come back to visit as much as I am able.

I must now tell you a little secret of mine. When we moved here to Pueblo I hated it. There were no sidewalks, no parks in our neighborhood, and no decent kids around. We found a small brand new hs group that helped me find others but practically all the kids were preschoolers. I more recently found a wonderful christian group that has plenty of boys my boys ages and my boys started to make friends. But , and here is the secret, I still don't like it here. It's all so dead looking. Even the yards because most of those are nothing but rocks, ahem I mean xeriscape. Although I still feel as though I am moving to the moon there is something really great about where I am going. I can have the small town where I live. 45 min South and I have a huge town at my disposal. Savannah is 45 min south of me and it's huge. I wonder if it's bigger then Denver, which by the way should I mention is a 2 hour drive for me right now. So going to Savannah will be like going to fountain (where we used to live and about 10 min from almost all relatives). There is a huge hs group that is very active. I am excited to meet them and get the kids situated. MY MIL said only for the 5 time that we should probably put the boys in ps down there, you know just to make some friends. Umm here's a newsflash I am almost positive those are not the kind of friends I would prefer my kids to have. Kwim?

Well I should really go. I need to keep packing and cleaning, I also need to prowl the neighborhood for my dog, I need to call the pound and see if he is there. Not sure if this is my last post for a while but if so I will be back soon . I hope.

2009-07-27T15:52:00.001-06:00

Summer smiles

2009-07-16T17:04:00.012-06:00

Today we took our friends to Glenn Eyrie. This place is the coolest. William Palmer Jackson founded the city of Colorado Springs and Glen Eyrie's Castle was his home. This place is smack next to Garden of the Gods. OH by the way I think this place would be perfect for a letterbox. You can hike on the grounds, take a tour of the castle or have proper English tea in the castle. They have retreats and conventions and speakers that I would love to see and hear.It is run by the Navigators. Navigator's is similar to Awana if you are more familiar with Awana's as we are. They run summer camps for kids as well and you can actually stay there too. I think its' not much more then a hotel would cost. All of the grounds are exquisite. There is a rose garden I have yet to see, perhaps one day. A couple of years ago my sister and I took my mom there for mother's day tea, it was fun and fancy and we had a fabulous time. The boys and I have hiked the back forest several times over.

So with my boys, my friend, her son and one additional friend we headed off this morning to go hike at Glenn Eyrie. We got there about 11 ish and my friend was astounded at the grandness of the grounds. I bet they have over 50 acres back there and all of it is just breathtaking. OH and I think it would be such a great place to put our very first letterbox, I have been looking for a spot to put it. We drive all the way to the last parking lot as it is the closest to the hike.

We cross bridges, streams and riverbeds. Along the way a group of visitor's spotted some mountain goats and we managed a picture. About an hour or so we finally get to the end where there is a wonderful waterfall. At this point we decide to stop and enjoy that we got there and eat some lunch. I knew there were some punch bowls at the top of the mountain. Technically we were at the bottom of the waterfall but not the top of the mountain. The last time we were there I didn't feel comfortable hiking up to the punch bowls but this time my boys were more then capable so we did. The trail is rocky and slippery and you are at about a 80* angle to the top. About a quarter to half a mile through some incredibly rocky and slippery terrain we finally made it although not without a few extra scratches and bumps along the way.

What is a punch bowl? I didn't really know to be truthful. Appearntly it is a part of a stream where the water has created a sort of bowl that you can take a dip in. All the kids at first chickened out and I knew how cold that water would be (really we were in the mountains of course it will be freezing). Well the dominoes fell-one took the plunge and they all followed suit. After that it was next to impossible to keep them out of the punch bowls. They were like little monkeys crawling around and getting out and egging each other on. It was a wonderful time. It took me about 15 minutes to get them to finally stay out of the water and start going back. I actually had to start going on the trail to really let them know it was time. There was so much fun chatter among the boys all the way back to the trail about the punch bowls.

I am including a little slide show of our trip. I hope you enjoy.

Letterboxing 101

2009-06-20T09:02:00.006-06:00

Have you ever letterboxed?? If not you are missing out. I discovered letterboxing some years ago. I was reading one of those smaller newsletter type papers that some cities have. You know the free ones. Anyway this article caught my eye. Being the mom of three boys the idea of treasure hunting in nature definitely seemed like our cup of tea, or whatever the boy equivalent is. So what is letterboxing you say? Well let me inform you. Letterboxing is AWESOME. LOL. Seriously though, letterboxing involves

1. going to the letterboxing website

2. Finding letterboxes in your area

3. Getting the clues

4. Follow the clues to find a hidden box

What is inside this box??At the very least you will find

~a stamp

~a logbook

and possibly

~a pen

~an ink pad

So what do you do? Well you have your own log book. Ours is about 5 by 7 ,spiral bound, hard cover notebook. You will also want a stamp. You can go to your local hobby store and grab one that is meaningful to your family. I had one professionally made with my dh's family crest for one of his father's day presents. It is special to us and has meaning. Next you stamp their stamp in your logbook and your stamp in their logbook. You can write a small note and the date you found it. You may also go back to the letterboxing website to tell the owner that their box is still there and in good shape, this helps them immensely in the keep up of the letterbox. And that is it lady's and gent's. These boxes are hidden everywhere.

One such box led us to our favorite family hike. The trail is called "Seven Bridges" and it is gorgeous. It is about four miles of kick butt hiking. At the right time of year there are wild raspberries that my boys LOVE. Trust me I cannot emphasize that enough. We hadn't been there for almost 2 years, due to dh getting sick. A friend of mine wanted to go letterboxing since she hadn't been and I raved so much about it. So we all gathered up and headed out on thursday. It was the perfect day for a hike. We had 7 kids ranging in ages from 4-13. It took us about an hour and a half to get to the box. My friends and I had a great time and they are officially hooked on letterboxing now.

We love the fact that our kids had a great time in nature. No T.V., video games, computer, mall, park. Just plain outdoors. Beautiful, wonderful, magnificent Nature. The kids had a terrific time and even the 13 yr olds admitted they were tuckered out. Half the kids fell asleep on the way back. We ended our day with me taking them to the German Deli I love. Both my friends are military and had been in Germany not too long ago. Here are some pic's of our hike.

Austin, Conner and Josh go in the river. The ice cold river. Can you see Conner's open mouth? That is him gasping at the coldness. Their feet turned pink and numb in a matter of 2 min. tops. It was quite funny and of course a great lesson in hipothermia.

Lindsey, her son, Colin, Lindsey's daughter and Brenda. This is our last bridge, Bridge # 7. We hung out, ate lunch and caught our breath. The boys spotted some small fish trying to swim upstream and attempted to catch them. Unfortunatly you had to get in the water to do it. So they got wet and a bit cold. The weather was hot so it just cooled them off.

Conner finds a spot to hang out in.

Austin Climbs up this hill. It is quite tall and he is far up there. That is why he is so small.

Colin loves nature and he does very well in it.

Family Talk

2009-05-31T08:08:00.009-06:00

To South Carolina we go. WE had been planning this trip earlier and the plans fell through as the doctor's did not think it was a good idea. Now we missed the Family Reunion that not even Chris has been to. The objective of the trip is to see if dh gets better if we live here. Obviously three weeks is not the same as living here but last time we were here for two weeks and an ulcer dh had on a finger went away. Granted it was not as far along as dh's toe.

Doc still didn't think it was a good idea but dh had other plans. He figured if they are going to amputate half his leg anyway why not come down here and see if he gets better. Well the jury is back...sort of. He is feeling much better. The burning sensation he has has been MIA and he has taken walks with us. Also the ulcer on the toe next to the one they amputated went away, cleared up, left the building, healed what ever you want to call it. The toe looks great, nice and pink no black anymore. Also where they amputated healed considerably more in the amount of time we spent there then in the amount of time since the amputation. So the final part of the experiment will be to see if he gets worse again. If this happens our plans for moving down here just went to the express lane. This comes with very mixed feelings for me. Obviously if hubs is better there I am willing to go. All of my family lives here. Well not all of it since there is alot of family that my dad has around the U.S.A. But my parents, grandparents, brother and sister all live here. Dh's parents do as well. I like having my family around and being able to get together if I want. All those holidays and the simple things too. But if dh improves the decision is a no- brainer.
Anyhow the trip was fun and very relaxing. We had no agenda just a list of people we want to spend time with. A majority of the two weeks there we spent on the beach. A cousin of dh owns a condo on the beach. It was very nice. We got burned to a crisp our first day out. I could swear I put on sunscreen. We went to some u-pick farms and got the freshest fruit, yummmm. The boys loved picking the strawberries the most. I think Conner only contributed to his tummy but he is still 10 so I let it slide. We saw an island that was a bird sanctuary and a loggerhead turtle nest. We saw millions of sea snails and slugs ( so gross they look like poop, snicker) horseshoe crabs, ghost crabs, jelly fish, birds, dolphins, hummingbirds, the smallest frogs ever, lightning bugs- such a huge hit, love bugs- so funny the reaction of the boys to these ones, lizards, butterflies, turtles and I'm positive I missed some. We spent a couple of days out on a hunting ground that some cousin's of dh use for weekend getaway. They all brought 4 wheelers and the kids would ride the trails. They did this every weekend and about 20 people would come. It was a good time and the boys loved 4-wheeling. One of their kids feet couldn't even reach the floor of the 4-wheeler and he was 5. I thought wow not sure I would let my kid at that age but that is none of my business. I finally found the gulah gulah island baskets. I remember in my research reading about a small island that was cut off of the mainland till only about 20 years ago or so. Anyway there was a completely different community and they all did things in very old ways. It was neat learning about them. They are supposed to make some wonderful baskets and I do want one. Colin caught animal after animal. As a matter of fact I'm not sure I would have seen so many different animals had it not been for him.

Distant cousin's invited us out for BBQ's and family dinners. Apparently pretty much every Sunday they go to a house and does pot luck. Its very neat to see a family do this. We would live about a mile down the st from their homes so I am sure we will become part of the tradition. A friend of the family, dh's cousin's family, is a pastor and prayed over dh. It was very nice and the next day the skin came off like a scar would. Kid you not. Oh I already told you about it. Sorry, I still can't quite grasp it. We did look at some modular homes. This would be a very frugal option and eventually we could build our dream home on the property. I can not believe how nice these homes are. It is definitely not what I pictured. There are wood burning fireplaces, garden tubs, huge kitchens with island, stone work throughout. With any luck we can be debt free in a few years.

I used this "vacation" to give the boys a break from school although they did learn alot during this trip. I will be having them do reading lists ,3 math lessons a week and we will do science projects . What are some of your plans this summer?

what didn't work

2009-05-06T06:46:00.005-06:00

This year has been, well not my best in the homeschool department. I don't mean your usual "I'm not doing enough" type stuff, although I do tend to have that . I'm talking about I have really let alot slide by. Let's see yesterday the boys got done with "school" by lunch, well a while before. I looked at the clock and we went through what they had done. Math, check, Literature, check, writting, check, grammer, check. We alternate days for history and science and that day was science. They hadn't done that so they wanted to watch the Magic school bus. Well that's all fine and dandy but in order for me to feel like we did science I would love a little hard proof. So I found the lessons for that particular episode and printed out 13 pages for them each. We still got done with time to spare for lunch. Then I wallowed in the whole I should be doing more. What can I do? I finally hit on that I do need a good plan.

As with history that had been floundering for a good portion of the year once I had a plan in mind, I had a direction. But science has been a bit more whatever the kids feel like doing for science works for me. Now that has lead to some wonderful projects and neat studies such as the time they made rock candy. Unfortunatly none of it tied in with anything else. I really like when our subjects touch on each other. A good example is when we were reading "Daniel Boone" and studying Native Americans. They were great companions. I need a good plan otherwise I know this will happen again. I would love to get books that we can read that relate to our history or science projects that do.

Do I then get a Science text ? or what? I really feel like I wouldn't have floundered so much had I had a text to fall back on in the event I hadn't been prepared due to our life getting in the way. Then I feel that perhaps I am using that as a crutch to fall on when saying I haven't done enought this year. Kwim? Half the year the boys went to co-op every other friday that would involve 3 science classes that were about an hour long. I really didn't worry about science then because we still did what we normally do plus that. I almost felt like I had no need to concern myself with science. Then the other half the year we just do random things that interest the kids.

Over the past year I have been mulling over getting Apologia Science. I have heard good things about it. Now to figure out which one I want. I know they generally go in an order of some sort. I would like to use them with all three kids. They will be in 6th, 7th and 8th next year. So which one will fit? They love creatures so it would have to be one of those. I am leaning towards the land mammals one. I think they would enjoy it. Should I get three of the same book? That seems a bit nuts too, and expensive. But I definetly can see that there could be fighting over it at some point if there is only one. If I buy three why not buy different ones. That way I have three years of Science, I'll just switch them around. I would like them to work a bit more independently and if I do three I have an inkling that won't happen. But if I have one they can help each other out which will be great for critical thinking. There are pro's and con's to having one or three. Overall I think mabey one for the two younger kids and one for the eldest may work best.

I truly have enjoyed the reading portion of our school time. It is the only time no one is fussing. Honestly I wonder if other homeschoolers have all these squabbles. Oh that is a whole nother post. Anywho I know the kids really enjoy this time as well and they are listening to books that otherwise I know they would probably not read. We will continue checking off our list till it's done. Then I will need a new list. Since the reading of "Daniel Boone" worked out so well at the time I think I will try to get some books that relate to other areas of our hs'ing. This way I can tie things in together. Of course this will require me to get my ducks in a row and get a plan.

What are some things that worked for your homeschool this year? What did you find did just not fit within your school year? I would love to see your responses.

Absent

2009-04-25T10:11:00.007-06:00

Boy I can't believe I haven't written anything since the beginning of the month. Two weeks ago hubs had a toe amputated so that is my reason for being absent. Things are better now and again we have adjusted.

We finally finished our Native American unit. Yeah. We just started New World Explorers with the program "History through the ages" by Time Travelers. Let me just say it's is looking to be a very nice study. We are currently going through what it means to be a sailor. The boys will be learning some knots sailor's used. I think they will enjoy this. I hope they do.

On the science front one of our tadpoles died and we got another one. It was a bit sad but what could we do.We watch them and are waiting for their little legs to sprout but nothing has happened so far. Colin found a great site that went through the process of metamorphosis. That day we learned alot about what frogs eat, where they live, and other neat facts about frogs. I haven't managed to get started on the lapbook on frogs but I am sure glad that I already have it. When I am ready it will be there.

Both Colin and Conner finished their Math books for the year. I ended up getting them new because I was only going to save roughly $20 at most by getting used versions .I am glad I did. I have always just gotten the used versions so I have never given them the tests because I didn't have them. I can see how the tests will be very useful. There alot that just cover basic facts so the kids know them well and wont get bogged down with doing simple math and can focus on the problem they are learning. I let Conner try Teaching Textbooks and put him in 5th grade book. Now I know he should have gotten the 6th grade one since that is what he will be in next school year. I felt that all the work done this year to eliminate some of his math anxiety has really worked and he seems much more relaxed in this particular area now. I don't want to go back to the way it was. We will continue working through the summer so he will be done with the book before the year ends. It has only been about a week since he started his new book and just the other day he got done with math and he said "Mom, I'm good at math now see how fast I got done?". We graded it and he so far is doing a fantastic job only missing one or two out of about 25. I love the new attitude and it reassures me in knowing I picked the right book. We have never used this curriculum so I will give you a better review of it in about a month or so time. That way I too know if it is still working and what I like and dislike.

We just finished the second book in "The Chronicles of Narnia". The Lion , Witch and Wardrobe. We managed to get a cd version from Focus on the family and it was so fun to just sit around and listen to the story. Even though the boys watched the movie it was great to show how different a movie can be from the book. I had told the boys this with other books turned to movies and they didn't get it. They sure got it with this one. Probably because they liked the movie and payed attention. As has been the case of late, Austin whom voices his dislike of hs somehow manages to be in the room when I am reading to the boys. I read the last chapter as opposed to listen to the cd, it just seemed nice. This time was a bit different as he wasn't floating around the room pretending to be busy and just listening for the time being. He actually sat down with us and looked at the pictures when they came up. He even joined in the discussion of the book vs the movie and such. It is moments like this that make me firmly believe he doesn't mind hs as much as he tells everyone but just wants to go to ps so he can goof off with friends. It is with this in mind that he will stay another year and then we will re-evaluate. The boys are also moving along great in their grammar. We do need to write some papers as we haven't done all that much writing but Colin is getting good practice with his hs'ed pen pal. I am still on the hunt for pen pals with the other two kids.

We are finishing up with CBS and Awana in short time and have already signed up for the following year in which CBS will be covering Revelations. So we are going from the beginning -Genesis to the end. The boys have made many friends and have enjoyed the studies. I am considering vacation bible school for during the summer. Its still up in the air as it is a commitment and we want to go camping a bit during the summer. What to do what to do?

The boys are also doing a unit study of sorts. We are planning a trip to South Carolina (yes we just went there this past summer) for the family reunion. We have never gone and dh also has never gone. Since he is home (healing from surgery) I thought why not. We are working out all the details in that department. The boys will plan our route , our stops, figure out how much gas we will need and how much it will cost. I am also going to find some fun activities for the states we will be going through. I have unit studies for all the states but I don't think it will be much fun to do them all in the car. I will pick and choose for sure. I know the boys are very excited to go to the beach and see some family. I hope to update as we go so when I get home I can scrapbook it all.

Well got to run the house work beckons.
Have a great weekend.

Just because

2009-04-01T15:11:00.002-06:00

I fell in love with this and if you haven't seen or hear this then how big is that rock you are hiding under anyway??? enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE6EkAvV4-Yhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GE6EkAvV4-Y

Getting things done....finally

2009-03-30T16:23:00.004-06:00

With our short break done we are back to the books. I am finally getting the Native American Unit done. Gesh I really dropped the ball on that one huh? Anyway we are going to do a review in the morning and an assessment in the afternoon. I think that way it's all fresh in their minds. I am going to buy time travelers history "early explorers". I have been looking at this product for some time and I really like all the hands on stuff. I think it will make it real for them. Unfortunately the one I have is the American Revolution and I really want to go chronologically. So it's off to find a copy at a decent price.

I got Conner's new math books. I ordered from christianbooks.com and it was all around pleasant experience. I went with Teaching Textbook in 5th grade. He will be working on this through the summer. He just finished his third lesson and has not missed a single number. I am so happy and no crying. Now I will send a thanks to God. I hope it continues and we have found a math that works for him. Colin informed me he would like to stick with Saxon. He is about to finish his second book with this math curriculum so if he likes it I will let him have it. I had asked him to think about it if he did want to try another curric, I guess thats my answer.

I am also excited as we just finished reading "Daniel Boone".Austin has somehow managed to be in the room to listen to me read several times. Until today it seemed coincidental, he would be eating or doing something in the kitchen. Today I knew, he sat down with chips and said "I'll sit here and listen till I finish my chips". Then he preceded to add in what happened in the last chapter as I did a small review. How funny huh? The boy who said I want to read on my own is now sneaking in to listen to me read. Trust me my heart sings and boy do I need to send out a big thank you to God for that one , huh? Anyway the story was nice and it sort of relates to our Native American unit since Shawnees and Iroquois are in it. I found the movie through Netflix (that place is becoming quite invaluable for school). So we will sometime this week be watching that. Conner is still deciding on what's next but our reading list is up top on the shelfari. It will be one of those. The boys thoroughly enjoyed this movie.

Well I got to run and put some bread in the oven to go with dinner(in the crock).

extra lessons

2009-03-25T19:55:00.007-06:00

It has been decided that we are taking spring break. I signed the boys up for Ice skating lessons, but Austin had other plans. He went to his friends house, well that meant it was just my two younger ones. We missed the first day but that's okay. Tomorrow is their last lesson and they are having fun and learning a few things along the way. They made friends with one of the boys who is quite a neat kid. I really enjoyed talking to him and it impresses me when young kids can talk to adults and actually hold a good conversation.

We got some tadpoles to add on to our science. Remember last year when I got those great pics of tadpoles of various lengths. It was so cool so I wanted to be able to see the process. I promise I will get pics of them and hopefully post them weekly. I had considered getting Praying mantis eggs but I just came across these tadpoles so it was decided besides metamorphosis is just cool to watch. Maybe one day I will actually get the eggs. and watch the process from the egg to frog. I am looking at some lapbook ideas covering metamorphosis and frogs. Hopefully it won't break the bank. Here are some links I found if you want to do something along these lines.

http://www.homeschoolshare.com/Frog_Lapbook.php

http://www.homeschoolhelperonline.com/lapbooks/frogs.htm

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/themes/frog.shtml

http://www.kiddyhouse.com/Themes/frogs/frogs.html

this one is geared to the classroom but still has some great stuff.

http://www.squidoo.com/FrogUnitStudy

Unfortunately spring has not shown up for spring break. Can you believe it? We instead get some chilly weather. We are supposed to get together with some friends to do a sort of cooking class with some pre-done dough. I think we were going to make doughnuts. Colin asked me on the way home today if we can make a pastry. How cool is that? He said he wanted to make a bear claw. Now I think that is a pastry. So it is off to find out just how hard this will be. I would like to make some soft pretzels (German style). I am sure you will soon find a post about this very soon.

2009-03-21T21:19:00.003-06:00

Spring is looming in the air teasing me with wonderful days. I long for warmer weather. then my bubble is burst as I yet again have to have some sort of confrontation with my oldest son now 13 years. The days my sweet boy and I got along so well are well not really around anymore. Don't get me wrong we do have our good times it just seems of late we have been butting heads for a while.

What is the latest? He "hates" homeschooling. His words. When asked to produce a reasonable reason to return to ps he gave his friends. MMMM that is one of the reasons we pulled him back out. Believe me I have seen him enjoy the benefits of hs ing. he sleeps most days till about 9:30-10:00. He is in charge of what he wants to work on as long as the list of things to do is done. We got a nice science book and he has been doing the chapter tests in them. History he has been writ ting a paper on the revolutionary war, world war 2 and civil war. This started a big fight. so here it is and you can tell me if I am nuts, wrong or right.

I gave him two weeks to get this done. Do you want to know when he finally started worked on it? Friday the day it was due. He did read(research?) his history book and find some information on the net. The problem here is he went straight to wikepedia and that's it. No further search for another source. needless to say when he turned in his paper that I saw him work on for all of an hour I was unhappy with the result. I'm sorry if I give you two weeks I better see that amount of work in your paper. He got all upset when I said he had to redo it and type it up. Then his buddy called and I said he couldn't spend the night because he failed to put in 100% in his history paper on the civil war.

So he rewrites it and types it up. Let me tell you here what I saw he came up with in the amount of time he worked on was impressive I just didn't feel that it was worth 7th grade work. So I said he could spend the next evening if he rewrites the paper yet again and looses the attitude. The following day he got up fairly early and rewrote the paper. He handed it to me and said can I go now? Ugg he obviously didn't get the point did he. I think that is the part that bothers me the most. Because if he doesn't get the point he will continue making the same mistake over and over. How do I show him the error of his ways in a way that he can see.

I got one more copy of the paper and I was still unhappy . Honestly I felt with every rewrite I saw how well he could write and I kept wondering how great of a paper I would have in my hands instead I got a total of 3 hrs tops and that was with the "oh my god" and "This is so stupid" and the ever present sigh as I take apart his paper. Would you guys like me to share the paper with you? I can type up the first and last copy. I still think that his paper could have been better but I am also tired of fighting over it.

15 years

2009-03-16T23:32:00.002-06:00

Wow. We made it 15 years today. We are high school sweethearts, yeah I know ick. I remember it all so very well. We are just going up north to find whatever we want to do. Is that what they mean by "paint the town red" ? yeah that is our plan. I like it. I get to spend two days enjoying my favorite guy. What are some ways you have spent your anniversary?

Yes you can

2009-03-10T15:55:00.006-06:00

For P.E. I generally just have the kids play outside. Then about 6 months ago they joined Karate so twice a week they went to practice. And a more recent addition would be ice skating which we have been doing almost weekly for two months now. Crazy huh? I am also considering a YMCA membership as I know there is alot that they can do in way of P.E. . Anyway.

Just a week ago the kids got their yellow belt. It was announced that they would be able to try and break boards and bricks. Well Monday was that day. All I heard all day was 'we needed to be ready to go' so they would be there on time to break the boards. I had them remind me about dinner very early and they even helped make it. They did their chores in a timely manner without too much fuss. They even asked if I needed help. (hmmm I should ask sensai if we can have board breaking day more often? of course then the magic will wear off)I had two choices

1. bring the camera

2. bring the camcorder

I brought the camera and the kids did a bit of Karate. Then the moment finally came. The class gathered by Sensai setting up. We watched a deomonstration on how to do it properly then we were off. At first only one hand went up for an attempt. Now Austin went first and of course after brittany (the youngest girl) went the two boys had to go. Surprised looks and amazed faces come to mind as each child managed to break the board.It was such a fantastic moment, one girl had been quiet all along when finally she got the courage. As she broke the board her eyes lit up and her mouth smiled in an astonished sort of way. I think that face was the best. Everyone was happy for her because by her expression just said it her shoulders rose and she had a more confident air. I think that type of parent moment is one of my fav's it is so good to see your kid or another kid in that switch from I can't to I can.

We stayed way over. Karate is held at our church there had been a birthday party so alot of people we knew saw the boys and their class break boards .I think it was the boys' favorite P.E. class by far. What do you do for P.E.

OOps it was late when I posted this. I meant to include these pic's

Sensai Matt chops a brick in half

Colin breaking his wood blocks made of Pine.

Austin mooved too fast for me to capture in the moment.

Success

2009-03-06T08:07:00.019-07:00

Success. In a word that describes Ameritowne yesterday.

We get up early to make sandwiches for lunch, showers and a general getting ready to go. We head out just before 8 am. 2 hours later we arrive and at a glance I realize there is something wrong. I was at the wrong location. See they have two locations and I was at the Belmar location. Luckily they had the address to their main building on their door. I punch this into the GPS and it turns out it's only 15 min. away and we were already 5 min late. Owell can't do anything about that now right? On we go. Finally 30 min after we were supposed to be there we enter the door to Ameritowne. It is so cute. Honestly, there are things that every town needs or really wants. It is a permanent towne set up for kids. The teller tables are smaller, the newsroom is teeny and it's all the mom's can do to contain that inner child and not play too. NO Fair. LOL. I talked to at least 3 mom's who also wanted to play in the make believe towne. I will share all the pics. Perhaps in a sideshow, hmmm . Oh yeah back to the task at hand.

I find were all the kids need to be and apologize to the parent volunteers about our tardiness. Luckily almost all knew I was from pueblo so we had a very long drive for this. I got a volunteer packet. It had goodies for all those dedicated parents to enjoy. We got coupons in the packet for a drink, chips or a cookie and a newspaper. There was info on what else the Bank offers in way of Bank services and the description of Ameritowne and International Towne. After this I rotate around to spend time with each of the kids. I walked around with them during breaks and helped them decide how to spend their paycheck. Isn't that cute. They each got a paycheck they had to take to the bank. They had to fill out a deposit slip and wait in line. Oh and they had to quack as they entered the bank. This gives the police officers opportunity to do their job by giving you a ticket. Isn't that just the cutest thing ever? Anyway the kids were to leave so much in their accounts when depositing their paychecks. So the kids got $20.00 in Ameritowne dollars to spend around towne. After they ran out of money they had to write checks. All this they were to keep track of in their registers. I waited with each kid as they went to the bank, I snapped pictures and made threats of bright lipstick kisses if said child wouldn't at least look at the camera. I swear my boys are so hard to get a picture of these days. See what I have had to resort to? I mean really do you think I look good in bright red lipstick?

The college offered classes. This was done by watching a short video on the college degree of their choice. Austin watched broadcasting and got a laminated degree. Again how cute?!Conner had the most free time as he had to go out and about to survey citizens of Ameritowne as to which shop had the best customer service. He also needed to gather the donations to various charities. Colin had to write about 20 checks for the college. I think he has it down pat now. LOL. Austin served endless customers soda, cookies and ice cream. All the time he had to wear an McDonald's cap. The mayor and judge had given speeches and cut the ribbon for towne hall calling Ameritowne open. I was at the wrong angle for that one. Several Bank employees were there to help out and make sure that everything ran smoothly. One of them talked to me briefly about putting Austin in International Towne. I said we had done this about a year ago. Most shops sold trinkets and the boys bought some cute stuff. At the end of towne the managers of the shops gave out certificates of appreciation to their best employee.

On our way home we hit another mall. I am going to go to all the malls there just so I remember what a real mall looks like. Trust me if you lived here you would understand. But that is another story. Austin was so stinking cute. We had a nice chat about their day. Here is a bit from Austin and my conversation that I just have to share.

Austin: Man this one kid made me maaaddd
Me: Really? How is that?
Austin: Well he ordered a coke so I get the cup and start to fill it up. Just as I get about half way the kid says "make that a diet coke". (It must be stated at this point Austin had the look of a veteran fast food worker that had to deal with irritating customers all day. It was so funny)So I pour out the drink and start to fill it with diet coke and half way through the kid says "Oh you could've mixed them".

I could barley contain myself at how much this affected Austin.Colin said he had to write at least 20 paychecks and thought the yearbook photographer was overpaid. I guess he got the gist of what it takes to run a college.Conner said he had alot of work by having to ask all those citizens which shop had the best customer service and then getting the donations. He also said this enabled him plenty of free time to enjoy the towne. All the kids said they wanted to do the same exact job again next time. We end up at Park Meadows Mall and boy it's a nice one. They even have valet parking. We walked around that and then headed out and home. We had such a blast.

Here are some pics

More training

2009-02-27T18:35:00.009-07:00

Yesterday I woke up with flu/cold like symptoms. I pressed on. This morning I woke up feeling even worse. With plans of going to Denver for another Ameritowne training looming I again pressed on. I was mostly in a daze and on auto-pilot for most of the day. We got to the training late , of course. The boys learned their jobs and were then directed towards their group. All the children were divided among volunteer mom's and dad's each with a different area to teach. The idea is that the kids all have jobs that run a different part of town. There are many here are a few Towne Hall, T.V. station, snack shop, Bank, Medical Center and newspaper among a few others. At the bare minimum 60 kids participate in this event. There are generally two trainings and then the actual towne. So I suppose you want to know now what the boys will be . OH ok then. drumroll please.

Austin is in sales at the snack shop
Colin is an accountant at the college
Conner is a Community Relations Director at the towne hall

Austin's job entails offering refreshments to hungry and thirsty citizens.Quality control is important because customers expect to get what they ordered. Proper hygiene is of utmost importance. Colin keep writing checks for business expenses, keeping a register sheet and making deposits as well as recording them. Conner's job responsibility is to collect all donations for the six Young Ameritowne Non-profits. You will record all donations and announce amounts at close of business day. Also responsible for Quality Service Survey and report of.

Conner's title just cracks me up. All the kids were like your a what? It was so over their heads. Colin had a great time in training. All I kept hearing was and then I had to subtract all this money and did you know I had to pay the photographer $25 for the yearbook? He was incredibly animated, turns out he likes his job so far. Conner still is unsure of what his job entails but we know it will be customer service. Austin was also in Customer service. So I helped the parents out while we taught the kids about good customer service and advertising. I didn't really help all that much , seems my symptoms were getting the better of me.

Conner and Austin in their group for customer service training

Colin is in another room with his group, this one all accountants for different area's of Ameritowne

This is the advertising signs the kids came up with.

The kids had a good time and learned some skills for their jobs and Ameritowne. Next week we will go to Ameritowne. I can't wait to tell you all about it. Bear with me as this is our first Ameritowne.

All the way home my poor aching (the flu like body ache, kwim?) body sniffed and sneezed and coughed wishing for a nice warm bath or bed. Two and a half hours later I pulled into our house thanking God for getting us there and me to a nice bed. So I did the bad mommy move and made dinner leftovers or whatever they could figure out on their own.

This one is just for fun, while getting their lunch we came upon a Nestle Toll House Cafe. Can you believe it? I had no idea they had these shops.

Ameritowne- Hands on lessons for "free enterprise"

2009-02-21T17:47:00.006-07:00

Friday sent us to Denver for the first of two training sessions for Ameritowne. Now if you haven't heard of Ameritowne it is a phenomenal "hands on " lesson in free enterprise. We did International towne last year and the kids had a blast so now we will venture in Ameritowne.

You can get more info about these events and if there are some in your area here. We got up and left the house about 7 am. We were unable to get the materials before the training session so when we got there we had to fill out job applications and fill out our checks and registers. We turned those in and then came the speeches for mayor and judge from the running mates. It was so neat these kids had truly worked on these speeches and it showed. There were about 5 kids up for each position in suits to boot. It was fun. The running kids all sat down and groups formed around them at which point we got paper and colored markers to make posters for our running mate. WE lucked out that the guy we were going to vote for, for mayor, sat with us so making the posters was fun. One of the parents gave a finance presentation and we had a general election. We gave our ballots and left. I did want to get home around a decent hour. Next week we are to come back and the boys will find out what their job is and get training among other things. I am so excited about it all and the kids seem to be as well. I got this huge binder that is a complete lesson plan for this.

The boys making campaign posters for our Candidate "David"

Austin came up with "David is Haven" Poster. Oh and if you look close at Colin you can see his cheek has a scrape. This is from him falling on the ice the day before while ice skating with friends.

The boys make friends

Its funny because just the other day I was reading a blog and ti was talking about getting homeschool burnout. And it hit me I was in a rut and had burnt out and needed something to spark my interest and the boys too. I think going to Ameritowne is doing just that. I am going to do the lessons to get the boys ready and hopefully I will have enough time. I can't wait to share some of it with you guys.

Oh and share if you want what inspires you to keep going when your homeschool meter has run out.

Yellow and more

2009-02-17T13:21:00.010-07:00

My boys tested two weeks ago to get their Yellow belts in Karate. Monday they found out they all passed the test and now have earned their yellow belts. You should have seen their faces it was great but of course one glimpse of my camera gets the ole' eye roll so unfortunately I did not capture the moment. I did manage to get a couple shots of them trading in their white belts for their new belts.

They have been going for almost a year now and have worked hard at learning. I actually count this for some schooling as it serves for P.E. and Foreign Language (Japanese). Occasionally Sensai throws in some history about Karate as well.

Sensai Gary passes out the belts while Sensai Matt hands out the written portion of the test along with their certificate showing their rank.
Austin was actually happy about this. True to his age he is starting to fight us on going to Karate.

The kids managed to talk me into trying a science experiment involving a microwave and grapes. Yup I am a mom of BOYS. Lol. Apparently if you cut a grape in half and put it in the microwave they spark at each other. We found that they only did this once or twice so if you missed it you need new grapes. A whole grape will "scream" during microwaving. This one is sort of creepy if you want to make it creepy but really all that is happening is the air is making that noise due to the heat the grape is experiencing. This is very similar to a marshmallow experiment they did last week. That was quite fun . They put marshmallows in the microwave and the marshmallow expands. We added food coloring and it doesn't expand where the food coloring was. It was neat to see what we could do with the marshmallow.

The boys look on as their grapes spark at each other. This is followed up by a series of "cool", "awesome" and "now let's ......, no no lets do this.....". It was fun to watch their creativity go wild as they went through the scientific method trying all sorts of things, having a good time and learning.

Marshmallows Before

Marshmallows After

Marshmallows with food coloring, notice that all the parts with food coloring is sort of dented inwards and the parts without food coloring still grew.

Movie's

2009-02-13T07:17:00.003-07:00

The boys have been busy making stop motion pictures or is it films?? Anyway it's actually Colin who has been busy doing this. It took us some time to figure out what to do once we had the pictures all done. Once we figured out how to manipulate the pictures on Windows Movie Maker we got it done. Then Colin was off, of course he had made three short films at this point. I am proud to report he uploaded them to Youtube. Here is a direct link to them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYImdBZbFHo

Please let me know if you don't get to his Movie as I will need to adjust the link.

In other news we have been busy getting ready for Winterfest. This is a weekend youth retreat to Estes Park through our church. The boys well Austin and Colin are very excited. They have to be at the church at 9 am and then they take the bus up there. It will take them about 5 hours. I got the boys some things to keep them busy and a bunch of snacks. Of course being a scrapbooking mom I gave them both disposable camera's, No way was I handing any of my camera's over to be lost. I told the boys that The Stanley Hotel is in Estes Park, you remember the movie "the Shining" it's that hotel. I wonder if they will even see it, LOL.

I'll write more later but right now I got to go finish making those pancake's. Have a good day.

Here and there

2009-02-04T08:34:00.005-07:00

We have been dabbling in a few areas of late. The boys found a recipe for Rock Candy and wanted to make it. I said fine. Do you know how much sugar is in those things?? Ick Anyway they boiled some water and sugar among other things and put them in mason jars. Again when I think about the size of a mason jar and the amount of sugar I want to gag. Two of the candies did not turn out. But Conner lucked out although it took a whole lot longer than stated.

I was also concerned with how long it sat out on the counter. I mean if you leave juice or ice tea out on the counter it goes bad by the next day so I thought this can't be good to eat. What do you think? The recipe said it should be fine though. I also included a link to the recipe for those adventurous spirits. The site you will come to is absolutely fabulous and since I have a chef in the house I go to it often to see if I can make a lesson out of something we cook. What a great resource.
http://www.exploratorium.edu/cooking/candy/recipe-rockcandy.html
So here is our rock candy.

For our Indian history lesson we made Navajo fry bread. Honestly once I figured it out it was no hard at all. I can't believe they charge so much for what essentially is pancake batter. Ok the kind of batter we make in Germany not the fluffy stuff Americans make. I mean its eggs, milk and flour and they want to charge what for that? I think though now that we made it we won't be purchasing that anymore. We thoroughly enjoyed making and eating it. We even thought that if we piped it we could make funnel cake. That is another time though.

Here is our Navajo fry bread. MMMMMM

My boys enjoying the fruits of their labors, or rather mine since this did include frying. I don't like for them to mess with frying. You can sprinkle cinnamon sugar, powdered sugar or whatever you like. The Navajos used this like a taco and put any and all of their meal into it. In this way they didn't need utensils. My question is how did they fry it? I mean where did they get the oil and does a fire get hot enough or too hot for oil? I didn't see this in the lesson and have yet to find the answer.

Ok I'm not sure if you can tell but the egg on the left is way smaller then the egg on the right. We got these from a friend and I took the opportunity to show my kids why the egg carton is labeled medium or large or extra large eggs. It is one of those simple things that I even overlooked but once you saw an egg of a different size you could really appreciate when a recipe calls for a certain egg size. It truly would make a difference, I think.

This one is just to show you the craziness that my poor family has to put up with from me. I was at a friends house and on her counter there sat a stainless steel cookie jar. It was a small/medium size and had a glass lid. I saw that it was for composting. Now here is why this is interesting. I have had a composting bowl out on my counter for a year and it's , needless to say, very unsightly. I love being green and strive to make our household that way. So I said to myself why didn't I think of this? I mean really, I could still have my compost stuff handy till it is ready to be taken out to the bin but it would have to look ugly. We were at the store and I had told hubs about it and he found this trash can. Its fantastic because it has a plastic insert that comes out so when it's full the kids can pull the insert out to empty into our bin outside. Yes this is the craziness of me. LOL.

Vanessa

Keeping it interesting

2009-01-23T08:17:00.004-07:00

This is our third year of homeschool. The first year we did K-12 through a local virtual charter academy. The boys hated it. Well let me take that back. They loved the field trips and so did I. And Colin really enjoyed Art. So the following year we went part time. Austin also went back to Public school on a trial basis. That brings us to this year. We have gone it alone and that has created more work for me and stress. I would love to say I have kept their interest but alas I think we have gotten a bit of a burnout. So how does one go about not getting burnout on their homeschool curriculum? I think the answer lies somewhere in keeping the kids interest alive while not having mom work overtime to do just that. I mean lets be real if Mom ain't happy no one is happy, right? Lol I am kidding to some extent cause that line is actually fairly accurate isn't it?

I have all boys and I am well a girl so our interests are well different. I don't understand some of theirs and well they certainly don't understand some of mine. I loved doing lapbooks for several reasons. It went across the curriculum so I felt that I wasn't missing anything all the while studying something the boys had picked out. I also ended up with quite a few lapbooks that showed that hey we did do something. I even shared them recently with a friend, I hope she liked them. I can also say that out of everything we did last year (school year) what we studied for our lapbooks is what the boys remember most. Unfortunately my boys also seem to be getting older and more advanced and they feel that they have outgrown this wonderful way of teaching. I tried to accommodate them this past semester and I really miss those lapbooks. Conner still wants to do them but he is also the only who I think figured out that there isn't all that much writting on his part. I want to bring them back. I will have to see if I can talk them in to it. If not how do I go about doing unit studies other than boring writing in a notebook? It has been suggested I do notebooking but I have not done this yet so I need help in that department. If I could just see one, better yet get my hot little hands on one to see and explore that would be ideal.

We have started reading books again and the boys are truly liking being read to. they have a literature notebook and for every chapter I read they have to write three things about it. I put a little list on the sidebar to show what we are reading and for me to remember what we have read. We just finished "The call of the wild" and they got to watch the movie after. We are now starting the first book in the "Chronicles of Narnia" series, "The magician's nephew". Now I would like to take those books and put together a vocabulary/spelling list for the week. I think it is important to learn new words and to crack open an actual dictionary.

I have been dabbling with the idea of doing a cooking day every other week. First it is an essential skill in life that a future wife will certainly appreciate. Second there is so much learning involved. From learning to measure and the math around it to learning what julienned is. Or even what a utensil is called other than a flipper. LOL. I know some hs families do this with younger children but I think it would still be incredibly valuable. I mean with smaller kids there is only so much we can have them do. I am so curious to know who else does this and considers it school with middle school kids. I have a son who says he is going to have a restaurant business so wouldn't it be great if I could teach him as much as possible so when he gets older he can skip a few college classes because well he knows that already.

Austin also loves Gems and Minerals although this past year at ps has dwindled that love which is one of the reasons I pulled him right back out. I hate seeing that spark gone. We go to rock shows but have yet managed to go rock hounding. I am going to look into this as well for every other week to have a sort of nature day. We could start a nature notebook. A while back we went on a field trip to a enviormental nature park and the kids were to sit quietly for 5 min and on their paper they had an "x" in the middle to represent themselves and they were to write down all the animals they heard and mark it on their paper as to what direction it was in in reference to themselves. Did that make sense? Anyway Conner and Colin enjoyed this immensely and we could do this as well during those trips.

All this is mulling in my head as I have my coffee and try to make our homeschool more fun. There is no reason we need to be bored and I get such satisfaction from seeing that little spark and excitement in my kids, don't you? How do you keep your homeschool interesting?

Vanessa

Saving Money

2009-01-14T07:32:00.007-07:00

With the economy the way it is, and of course it seeming to not turn around anytime soon there is plenty of talk about how to save money. This even came up in discussion when I was with some friends the other day. So how do we save money and what are some tips that really worked. I am mulling over and over this and of course if you google "saving money" you will undoubtedly come up with an insane amount of websites/pages/blogs surrounding this subject. The thing about this is that I get to those sites and undoubtedly there are things that I am

A. already doing
B. am not comfortable doing
C. is not something that I have in my life therefore can't alter to save money on it.

So lets face it. Some things work for some and not others and vice versa. Of course it is still good to have a list of sorts to try out and see if it does work for you. So I am going to be compilling a list of money savers. All readers are of course welcome to add their own saving tip. I hope to be able to do a sort of monthly blog on new things that we have come up with. Things that my family has tried and the outcome of that. things that I am going to try in the next month. Do you have pen and paper to write all this down? Well no worries because it is written here and I sure hope this helps others out there trying to do their part to save money.

I know as a wife who stays at home I am very privledged to do so. In effort to ensure that I can continue to do so and as a christian it seems my duty to help my husband out in any way I can . I do the shopping and budget and bills so in this effort I can do so much to ensure that I am doing my part as a family member. I thought very much about this just before the new year.

We are an average family with credit cards and bills. We don't have a car payment but I do se a need to replace my husbands vehicle sometime in the next 2-3 yrs. It is an '98 and has about 150,000 miles on it. It is starting to have things go wrong with it. I need to ensure that when we do need to buy another vehicle that we have the cash on hand ensuring we don't end up with a car payment. Let me tell you how wonderful not having a car payment is. Just think of what else you could do with that $200-$500 dollars a month. You could pay off those darn credit cards. You could put that nest egg away because you ain't getting any younger(am I right?). You could help your college bound child not incur as much or any debt during their college time. You could go on vacation. Whatever it is you aren't sending it to someone else and that is a good thing (ugg martha). Unfortunatley we do have credit cards and in recent times we have charged them up between my dh getting sick and christmas. All I kept thinking about was that if I wasn't sending this money off to those credit cards our family would probably be in a postition to not have to charge anything. So everytime I took out that card I thought "wow, I could pay for this outright if I didn't have this debt in the first place". The Bible does talk about debt doesn't it? and I know I am not doing the plan set out for me. It is time for a change (hmm why does that sound familiar, doh I know gesh I watch too much tv).

I re-evaluated our budget and then had a friend look at it for me. I did this because of two reasons One: my friend actually does this as her career and Two: Do you ever notice if you look at something long enough that sometimes you can miss the most obvious thing that right smack in front of you? Well that was me and my budget. I tweak it from time to time and I try to see where I am making mistakes so I don't make them anymore. Well we figured it out and I now have a plan and I tell you I like that plan. It is a two year plan to be completley out of debt exluding my house. The first thing you are going to want to do is to re-evaluate your budget and if needed get outside help because sometimes it is worth spending that bit of money to get someone to tell you "do you know how much you spent at Wal-Mart last month?" x amount. As your eyes bulge out and you try to think back to how it could have happened. You have a budget how could you have gone that far over? I was nickel and diming myself. This was a great lesson for my children as we explained about the difference in the spending habits of women and men. Women spend less on each individual item and men are the big ticket spenders. But it is with the women that it adds up to more. How does this happen? I'm sure you know but my son's didn't and so we told them. Men will go out and buy that big screen tv for $1000 but then won't need to purchase a tv for well years. Where women spend $5 here and $16.00 there and at the end of the month it adds up and boy if you ever have kept track of that number you probably would be shocked.

I already comp shop but I don't go on those coupon websites and talking to a friend convinced me that I should start getting in the habit of doing that. It would also be a good idea to re-read my tightwad gazette's, I have all three and love them. If you don't have these borrow them from your library or go to half.com and buy them. That is where I got them and I paid more for shipping then the books.

A friend of mine is having a "year without eating out". This intrigues me in more way then one. Of course there is the benefit of saving money but there is a hidden benefit. Do you have any idea what is in that food that you eat while out? I don't and that is scary. Plus have you ever looked up the calories in most foods you eat out? If not the numbers are staggering. As far as saving money in the eating out department you can if you eat fast food and the dollar menu only then of course it would not be as pricey. But if you ever have watched "Super-Size me" you will quickly not have an itching for it anymore.

I found one day a blog that had "a month without spending". This meant that they were paying all their bills as normal and then they had x amount of money for food, gas, eating out, fun ect. This really intrigued me and you can click on the hyperlink for all the details. I thought it was brilliant, although I haven't actually done it. Can I do it? Hmmm that is to be determined but I would like to give it a try. Essentially this disciplines you from all those "needs" we seem to have these days.
To recap I save money by

Comp shopping/couponing
Periodically reevaluating my budget and getting outside help if needed
Re-reading my tightwad gazette's (all three) and trying things out of it
Cut down traveling/doing one day errand runs every week or two

The challenge therefore is of course for you to share a tidbit that worked for you and something you want to try. I will start this coming Febuary so get ready. I hope to come with a new post once a month and I hope you join me. Let's have it, How do you save money?

Vanessa

13

2009-01-03T10:26:00.005-07:00

Oh boy Austin is 13.

Happy Birthday.

We have let the kids decide activities and meals on their special day for years now. They love this as they get to pick all their fav's. I let Austin have his two best buds spend a couple of nights. He wanted to go ice skating so we did, two days in a row. He requested his favorite treat of brownies from Grandmy( his great grandmother) and fried rice from his Grandma. He had pizza for dinner and a great big chocolate cake I made for him. He had gotten a PSP 3000 from his grandparents and us for his birthday gift and he got it early on Christmas, another request. Anyway this meant he wasn't getting much in the way of gifts from us since we had already chipped in for this but I did get him the Left Behind teen series. Not all of them mind you but about 10 I think. I loved the Adult versions so I hope he will enjoy them as well.

How the time goes so fast. I can't beleive that Austin is already 13. That means that I can count on one hand the amount of years I have left for Austin to be at home. He has grown so much and I hope that I am doing everything I can to instill those good values. I also hope that I will be able to enjoy some of this time that I have left. Teenage years are not exactly a great time so pray for me .
Anyway here are a few shots of my not so little anymore Boy on his Birthday

Austin on the ice

Austin between his two best buds and Conner and Colin

Austin's Chocolate overload cake

Everyone is ready to be wacky and for cake

Honestly it wasn't my idea. Austins friends wanted a cake eating contest without utensils. It was a hit although very messy.

Vanessa

Family and holidays

2008-12-26T08:11:00.009-07:00

I have been so busy of late as I am sure you all have been too. I have not been around much. Alot has been going on, you know the usual of getting ready for the holidays and then surviving them. I am truly disappointed that I didn't make that many cookies this year. I love baking truly I do but with everything happening with my hubs my heart wasn't really in the Christmas spirit this year. I have since realized how silly I am being and am pushing my way out of this little funk I am in. The boys did make gingerbread houses and we baked some sugar cookies that we were going to decorate with a friend but the boys ended up playing instead and my friend and I just talked while I oohed and head over her home school room.

OH and my One year anniversary of this blog passed on the 22nd as well. Do you remember that one, I had chopped ten inches off my hair to donate to Locks of Love. I had always wanted to do that. My sister was right though my hair just about is as long as it was before I cut it. It was above my shoulders this time last year. I guess my hair does still grow like a weed. Boy has a lot happened since I started this blog. I hope that I can make my blog better next year.

We went ice skating and had a great game day with our local home school group. My boys enjoyed both but I think they liked the ice skating a bit more. Fine by me it gets them to have a bit of exercise while they are having fun. This is supposed to be a bi-weekly thing so I think the boys may tire of it at some point. We also made homemade ornaments and almost homemade ornaments. I got some Styrofoam balls and we hot glued bits of fabric into them and then a loop so it could hang on the tree. The almost homemade ornaments were some of those cool plaster of Paris ornaments you can paint. We also took some beads and bells and put them on those pipe cleaners to make cute rings. I love, Absolutely LOVE homemade ornaments.

My grandparents put on the holidays every year. There is a huge and I mean huge feast to be had with several choices of deserts. One would think a restaurant should have this many choices but as Austin says Grandma makes the best food. I showed my mom my feeble attempt at knitting a scarf, my first mind you. And of course I should have known better because my mom looked at it and took half a minute to try and fix the dropped stitches and decided the best way to go would be to start over. I was almost done and she just took it apart and then started knitting telling me she was doing me a favor. HUH? that is my mom to the tee. That and when Chris was trying to be nice by getting some family pics my mom smacked me every time he took on of her. This caused my grandmother to stop her yearly reading of a Christmas book and tell me to stop. Of course it was all in fun. We exchanged our gifts and boy am I glad we do the secret Santa or I would be broke right now or no one would have gotten anything from us. I love going to my grandparents house they are the only sane people in my family everyone else is nuts. We all had such a wonderful evening.

The whole Clan. My mil in front with all the grand kids. I am standing next to my grandparents and of course both my mom and brother conveniently hid from the camera.

But here my hubs captured this shot of my brother with his best Friend and both their girlfriends. My brother is the one with the hat sort of center in the picture

My mom and sister both knitting. This is the scarf my mom unraveled and did me a "favor" by redoing it.

Colin gets money as usual. He loves money.

Here is my dad. I swear every picture he has these glasses up on his forehead. Honestly he looks so handsome when he smiles.

And of course a pic of my kids decorating my tree for me. I treasure this time, won't be long before I can have my tree look just the way I want but will miss the ornaments being in all the wierd places the kids put them.

How was your holiday? I sure hope good.

Vanessa

Weekly happenings

2008-12-06T07:15:00.007-07:00

Boy has this been some week. We started out by finishing up out mini unit on Thanksgiving. We only did it for a week and really didn't do all that much in it but it was fun and the kids and I learned alot about thanksgiving. We then started some initial work on a Christmas unit that I am sort of throwing together as we go. The history Channel has a great video on the history of Christmas. I am gathering links and such so I can share all I have found. I am really going to try and make it fun.

Tuesday brought my Birthday. I am officially 33 yrs old. I don't really feel old but I do feel like certain things aren't within my capabilities anymore. Or maybe that is my mind playing tricks on me. I do know that I have outgrown a few things say like judging others. Ok I'm not perfect at it but to a big extent I no longer find myself judging someone when a friend tells me about said someone and what they did. I now think to myself what is the other side of that story? I had been doing this for a bit now. We did a very low key Birthday. Well a couple of months ago Dh felt inclined to get me a dachshund and two days later another one. They were to be my Birthday present. Let me say I really really enjoy these little guys. Honestly until they came I considered myself a cat person. I mean cats aren't all over you all the time, they don't slobber on you. they generally don't scare anyone either or hurt them in any real way or at least none of the cats I have had. You are on your own with any you have had. We have had numerous animals throughout our marriage and with that came a few dogs. They all always loved Dh and then loved Colin. None of them seemed to love me, they liked me sure. More like they put up with me. Anyway these guys genuinely seem so happy to see me and love on me that they officially have me wrapped around their fingers (or would that be toes? )Are you ready for the cuteness if not turn away now this is a warning of severe cuteness. Here are my dogs Sophie and Snoopy.

Sickening isn't it how cute they are?

Wednesday Austin got his braces installed. Is it installed or just on? I never had braces so I don't know. He has had a heck of a time refiguring out how to eat. We have a pet peeve about seeing people chew their food. During dinner I saw all of Austin's food and so I asked him to please try to chew with his mouth closed. He ended up in tears. I officially felt like a crumb . It was not my intent to hurt his feelings but he is aware of our rules and when they don't follow I can be rather unnice especially since he is almost 13 I feel he knows better and I expect more from him.

Thursday Dh had his finger amputated. More on that on my well spouse blog.

Friday we had to go to co-op. I really didn't want to as my emotions were all wrought. I felt like I would spring into tears at an inopportune time and I did. Luckily I have a very good friend there who has such a big heart. She prayed with me and I was comforted and inspired and very impressed. I don't come from a big religious family. As a matter of fact I come from a family that believes that whatever you do in church you can do at home just as well. It used to sound like a good theory but since I have been going to church more lately I find that it doesn't work because those people don't do it at home its just said. kwim? I really felt better and really really appreciate my friend. One day I hope I can return the favor or perhaps spread a bit of Karma by praying for someone else in need. Co-op went great. The kids got to launch their rockets (mini rockets). They also got to meet a detective and he talked about his job and gave all the kids a miniature pin. It is a replica of the shield they carry. They also got to work with the science of architecture. They formed groups and built a building out of marshmallows and spaghetti. They had a blast.

How was your week?

Vanessa

Advent fun

2008-12-01T07:38:00.003-07:00

I am originally from Germany. I was born there and spent the first 10 yrs of my life there. My mother married and American when I was 2 and 8 yrs later he wanted to go home. So we went. I knew a handful of American words (that's what I still call them most times, its weird). I had to have special tutors and my clothes were not up to standards. Us German Frauleins were still wearing puffy skirts with colored stockings and knitted sweaters. The American girls wore jeans and t-shirts. Another newbie for me was Thanksgiving, what was this strange holiday? And of course no one knew what an Advent Calendar was or at least in the way I was used to. Now I won't say my mom was all creative and stuff but each year my sister and I would get an Advent Calendar. You can now buy them in most stores. You know the ones with the chocolates in them?

In the yrs past this great thing has caught on here. I was so happy to have found a great link for an advent calendar that has all sorts of fun stuff. There is a link for every day till Christmas and on each day there are games, crafts, recipes, history and all sorts of fun that I would probably never be able to do all of but I can do some and record the rest for next yr although I may find something else.

http://homeschooling.about.com/cs/unitssubjhol/a/advent125.htm

We are going to do these things. I'm not sure what category they will all fit into but that is okay I am just going to simplify by saying it's a unit study. There all done in the hs field, lol. Each of the kids will get to pick something each and then I will get to pick at least one. That will have us doing four things on our Unit (like how I did that???) every day. I hope to share pictures and stuff.

Our tree is up and there is snow that is sticking to the ground or at least the roof tops. We have turkey, candied yams and green bean casserole for leftovers. I have put together two deer and a spiral tree to put in our yard. Dh got Santa out and put him on our porch he speaks and sings in ~~American~~ English and Spanish. Most of the decorations are up. We had a great four day weekend, how about you?

Vanessa

Being Thankful

2008-11-27T09:26:00.008-07:00

How do you teach your kids to be thankful? Latley I have been finding that I am thankful for very simple things, things that I have taken for granted for far too long. Now how do I show my children this. Well I could be dramatic and go over this ad nauseum but for now how about I do what another friend does occasionally that I find ever so delightful to read, she shares on occasion what she is thankful for.

~Having my grandparents still around to make the holiday feast and wonderful memories for my children and I to remember for years to come.

~Getting a very special call yesterday that brought me to tears at the generosity of others, thank you so much Susie

~Having a friend that truly understands so very much about what I am going through and being able to talk with her

~Having made my own pajama's (although the drawstring still needs to be redone) and soon to follow a purse

~Being blessed to enjoy my children by having them home with me

There are so many more but this is good and I love the simplicity of it. I used to be thankful for the biggies that well most are but I am learning alot of little things can be such a blessing in your life. I hope your holidays are wonderful .

Vanessa

Does it count?

2008-11-22T09:59:00.007-07:00

For a few days we took our non carved pumpkins and baked them, cut off the flesh, ran them through my kitchen aid(I love this machine) grinder and then put them in thin towles to squeeze the juice out. then we weighed 16 oz portions and froze them. I had wanted to can them but only have the pressure canner, which I have yet to use. I don't have the water bath one but boy it sure would have been nice to not take up all that room in my freezer with the upcoming holidays and turkeys and what not. The boys all helped although Austin very grudginlly. Conner was my biggest helper he loved the grinder and happily volunteered for this job. It's funny because generally anything that involves work makes conner run for the hills or throw a three year old tantrum. As a matter of fact my niece has sensory integration disfunction and my sister always tells me I should get conner tested because he tends to fall into many of the same categories. Anyway that is a whole nother story. We started with 4 pumpkins and I got 11 16oz containers in the freezer. I still have one pumpkin to go. Can I count this for school? and what is it considered other than cooking which is an elective?
Pumpkin puree is very messy affair

My work space

The finished product before freezing. I even saved the seeds to roast.

I hosted game day for our hs group and decided it was too messy of a job and took too long so I didn't finish it that day but I intend to this weekend, as matter of fact I should probably be doing that now. At game day we played this strange game called Quelf. Have you heard of it? It's not our game so I hadn't and it was so strange there didn't seem to be ryme or reason to it. There is no strategy so really no way you can cheat. I would explain it to you but that would be hard so I will give you a couple of examples. For one card you will need to choose from two categories say candy bars or movies that won an academy award and everyone goes around and names one until you get to a person that can't name another one. On another card you will need to hold your lip and say the card in a random way. Another card may make you act something out in alternative dance. Let's just say it was a strange game but we really enjoyed it and the kids are asking if we can get it. Hmm mabey Christmas?

I made my favorite Tiramasu cake for game day. Once upon a time I used to get recipe cards in the mail and they made several binders. I never did get them all but I have quite a bit and this is one of their recipes that I made once and I was hooked. I promised I would share the reicpe so here it is.

For the cake:

1 package (18 1/4 oz) white cake mix with pudding

1 tsp instant coffee

1 cup strong brewed coffee

1 TBlsp coffee liqueur or espresso

For the filling:

1 container(8 oz)mascrapone cheese

1/2 cup confectioners' sugar

2 TBsp coffee liqueur or espresso

For the frosting:

2 cups whipping cream

1/4 cup confectioners' sugar

2 TBsp coffee liqueur or espresso

For the garnish:

cocoa powder

Chocolate curls

Making the cake

Preheat ove to 350. Grease three 9 inch round cake pans. Prepare cake mix according to package directions. Divide two thirds of batter between 2 pans. Stir instant coffee into remaining batter, pour into rmaining pan. In measuring cup, combine brewed coffee and coffee liqueur;set aside.

Making the filling

In a small bowl, using a n electric mixer set on low speed, combine mascrapone, confectioners' sugar and liqueur. Beat just until smooth, Cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate.

Making the frosting:

In a medium bowl, using an electric mixer set on medium-high speed, beat cream, confectioners' sugar and liqueur until stiff. Fold 1/2 cup of crem mixture into filling mixture.

Assemling the cake:

Place one plain cake layer on a serving plate. Using a thin skewer, poke holes in cake about 1 inch apart. Pour one thrid of reserve coffee mixture over cake, then spread with half of the filling. Top with coffee-flavored cake layer; poke holes in cake. Pour another third of coffee mixture over the second layer and spread with the remaining filling. Top with remaining cake layer; Poke holes in cake. Pour remaining coffee mixture on top. Spread sides and top of cake with frosting. Place cocoa in a sieve and lightly dust top of cake. Garnish with chocolate curls. Refrigerate at least 30 min. before serving.

Note: You can substitute mascrapone with ricotto but you must make very smooth and it doesn't taste quite the same in my opinion although it is still a heavenly cake. I also substituted chocolate morsels as I don't have a huge chunk of chocolate to make curls from.

Mmmmm. It even looks pretty

See I need to work on getting the sides smoother and the morsels should be chocolate curls.

All the layers of the cake.

a little slice of heaven. MMMMMM

Vanessa

Austin takes the day off

2008-11-18T14:25:00.005-07:00

Curtesy of the Dentist and Orthodontist Austin has been given the day off. He had to have two teeth pulled. He said it didn't hurt but it hurt when I had one pulled. Poor guy. I felt so bad for him because his teeth were perfectly fine but because he has crowding in his mouth the Orthodontist needed to make room for his teeth. That way when Austin gets braces he will have the room for them to get uncrowded. On the 3rd of December he is supposed to get his braces put on. the Orthodontist assures me it will not hurt. I never had braces so I don't know but if Austin looks bad he may get that day off as well. Besides which appointments like this always seem to ruin the rest of the day. Don't you think? It's like if it isn't first thing in the morning or after about 1ish I don't get any other hsing done. The boys did do their math and are working on some english now. Im not sure we will get anything else done though.

Look at the root. I don't know why the camera is acting up. growl

Poor baby two teeth.

Vanessa

Back in the saddle? sort of

2008-11-16T08:38:00.004-07:00

Having been very distracted lately with other happenings in my life I have noticed that our hs is not at it's best and things have sort of slid. Being aware that is what is happening has led me to renew my commitment to my boys hs. I am re-planing their Indian study, no they have not finished it and yes it has been about a month or month and a half. I went to a great teacher store in the Springs and got a unit study on Indians. I am reading it now and preparing myself for what we will do out of it. I also am thinking about doing a thanksgiving unit. It's right around the corner and it ties in with the Indians.

Some things I am looking at for this unit are a strawberry drink, beef jerky, blue marbles(something to eat), zuni poetry, possibly coiled pottery, green Chile, Navajo weaving, sand painting,fry bread, pictograph, sunflower cakes, making paper and round Mayan calendar. Looking at the list now I think I may have to give some of these up no matter how fun they sound. Sometimes I get to caught up in how fun something sounds and keep adding to a unit making it incredibly long. Then the kids don't have fun, they don't learn and we are all miserable. I am slowly figuring this out. There will also be reading involved and research on the kids parts
to find answers to

1. Where they live
2. What was their culture like
3. Foods they ate(list at least 3)
4. Belief system

I am also thinking about a time line. While picking up the book at the teacher store they had one for Indians. It's pretty detailed but I'm sure I can figure out a smaller version to put in their notebooks. Conner still likes the lapbook idea but Colin really wants to move forward and do a notebook. I haven't done this before but that is okay, I will learn along the way.

Saturday is generally my planning day but I seem to have forgotten that in the past couple of months so lots to catch up on and getting back in the swing of things. There is also house cleaning to do, yeah(Not). I am finding more and more how nice it is after working hard to clean my house I feel so satisfied at the knowledge of it being clean. I am also not stressed by the endless things that need to be done. This has fallen off my track as well. Not that I am a neat freak or anything but I wouldn't mind having things orderly, kwim. I am going to attempt to organize my home. I have things here and there that need it and I have things here and there that are already done but need to be tweaked a bit or redone again as they have fallen out of the order.

In other news we went with our church to rake up the yards of the elderly. I really enjoyed helping out and I think my boys did too. Austin didn't make it as he went with the youth group up to Denver to a group gathering up there. So it was just Colin, Conner and I and they seemed to enjoy doing this. A couple of the folks gave us yummy goodies to thank us for the hard work we did. The gratefulness I saw in their eyes made me an emotional ball. What a simple thing to do and yet it made a difference in the lives of others. Something I and perhaps you would take for granted , raking up the leaves in your yard, is something some people can't do and they truly appreciate it.

I know I have a tendency to read into these things and make them relevant to me and how I view the world . What can I learn from this ? How can I teach or show my young impressionable boys this? I love to reflect, its sort of an obsession but I feel that I am trying to improve myself as a person and pass that on to my children. I like to think that I am a good person but I am human and I still make mistakes but I would like to say that I try to learn from them. I hope that my boys see this and that they too will strive to continually make themselves better people. So often we can get stagnant and then we do the inevitable and make a mistake. It is human nature, I just want my boys to know that yeah you will make mistakes but try to learn from them. So now that I have gone of another tangent back to our raking story.

I spent alot of time thinking about the people we helped and their gratitude. I thought of all the things that I do take for granted. I thought of all the rights my children seem to think they have. For example they get to spend an hour on the computer every day. They do ask to go on the computer but more than once have they asked "can I have my computer time now?". Do you see the implication in such a simple statement? My computer time? umm it's a privilege not a right. These are the things that were juggling through my head yesterday. Alot of people are scaling down on Christmas this yr, we are one of them. Most people do this out of necessity but some(those fortunate souls) are doing it as a choice as it seems to have been blown out of proportion. It seems as if you don't spend at least a hundred bucks on each child you are somehow a Scrooge? really? Seriously? (eye roll). When I see people so appreciative of something so small and so taken for granted it really makes me want to reevaluate my ethics and stand on many things such as Christmas or other holidays or birthdays. They all have gotten so out of proportion. It doesn't even seem to be about the holiday or what its original purpose was but more about the gifts and how much you spent. I am guilty as charged on this account as many of you are. I envy those who can make it so simple and beautiful. Ok maybe they really got to me or maybe I am already an emotional ball because of other happenings in my life. But to be so grateful for people just raking your yard? Wow. I am beyond impressed.

Ok now if you will just drop a note letting me know just how nutty you think I am to be this wrought over raking up yards I would much appreciate it. *sly grin*
Have a great day.

Vanessa

A Quick Note

2008-11-14T16:16:00.003-07:00

It has come to my attention that I didn't let you guys know that I did make a blog in regards to my dealings with my husbands health issues and the ramification surrounding that. I had spent enough time on telling you guy's about it so I didn't want to bother you with the details plus the blog is more a therapy for me and a possible help for others in a similar situation as opposed to finding a ton of readers. I actually have noticed I let alot of myself into that blog so it seems incredibly personal. Anyway I put the blog link into a widget that is at the bottom of my blog roll. Its all in black on the sidebar, really you can't miss it. So for those who cheered me on thank you so very much it was just the thing I needed to get back a bit of sanity in my life by letting some steam off. I can not express my gratitude in words here as there are so few to choose from so just know I thank you very much and I will forever be grateful for the kind words you guys have given me.
Enough said Now back to hs stuff.

Vanessa

Chef extrodinaire

2008-11-12T08:51:00.003-07:00

My boys have been trying to have a "cookoff" for some time now. I have invited anyone who would like to participate to do so. I did want to videotape these sesssions to give it a sort of "cooking show" feel. Well I forgot to do this last night but I did manage a couple of pictures of what Colin did before we at it all.

Colin wanted to make eggs benedict. I knew that the egg was poached and there was some type of sauce on top but that was the extent of my knowledge of eggs benedict. Colin said
Mom we learned three things today.
What's that son?
We learned how to poach an egg, how to make hollindaise sauce and how to make eggs benedict.
Why yes we did Colin(I look at dh with a very proud grin of how astute my son is)
The things we decided was that the english muffin would be better toasted. The egg should cooked a few minutes longer. Colin now has a new favorite breakfast and he didn't think it was all that hard. Dh said he would just fry the egg because it was easier. I pointed out that it was healthier this way.
It is amazing at how long i have gone without poaching an egg. I have never done this and here my 11 yr old son has that belt already under him. I am really proud of him for trying out a new recipe. He truly is in his element in the kitchen. Austin is supposed to make dinner for us tonight. I think it is breakfast burritos in the microwave. Yes I said microwave and yes I think that is wierd but hey it's all good. Oh yeah the pictures, here they are. And to anyone wanting to "cook off" with us just have your child cook a breakfast item of their choice, you may help out I did. Then put your link into the comments. I would do mister linky but I don't exactly know how yet. I hope to be able to do this next time. Sure hope you guys join us.

Hollandaise sauce. I made it because there seemed to be alot going on in the kitchen and I didn't want Colin to get frustrated. I wanted it to be fun. Besides now I know how to make it. Is it just me or does it look like pudding?
Eggs benedict by Chef Colin.

Vanessa

2 great new products you will just have to have

2008-11-10T09:59:00.006-07:00

I am sooo excited. I have found two great new products that you will fall in love with . They are versatile, easy to use and just soooo adorable.

The first product is this fantastic new bookmark I found. I have seen bookmarks and have had many throughout my life, haven't' you? While the old bookmark it was still a bit hard to find your place if it was very skinny and smaller than your book. Then I saw some that were thicker and came out of your book which I thought was ingenious and found very helpful. The problem is that inevitably I would loose the bookmark. Then I had spent all this money on a great bookmark that actually made finding my page easier and I would misplace it somewhere. Seriously? This new and improved bookmark does the same thing as far as great ease of finding your spot in your book and I'm pretty sure I will not misplace it. Here is a great picture of my new improved bookmark.

Our second product is just fantastic and I have never seen anything like it on the market. Too bad I think I will have it patented and make millions on dollars. Yeah. So this is in that infomercial voice.

Do you love puzzles? A lady appears shaking her head very excitedly yes I do.

But hate the tedious work of sorting through all those pieces for the ones you are looking for?

A scene shows with the same lady this time over her box of puzzle pieces. Her hair is frayed and she has a scowl on her face. She looks for a puzzle piece in the box and blows air out and puts the puzzle away as she got too frustrated. All around is kaos. The lady hears the wonderful infomercial guide and looks hopeful and shakes her head yes.

With our new Automatic puzzle sorter(APS) you will never again be looking for that elusive puzzle piece. Just place the APS in your puzzle box full of pieces and it goes to work for you diligently sorting pieces for the ones you are looking for.

The scene goes back to the lady with her puzzle. She now has lovely hair and of course her house is miraculously clean all of a sudden. She has a big smile on her face as she finishes the other half the puzzle thanks to the great new invention of the APS her life is wonderful with smiling children and cute animals by her side. (snicker)

So you want your own too? Well for the low price of not $49.99, no not even $39.99 and unbelievably not even $29.99 no you can get this great new product for the incredible price of $19.99. In a very low voice they ramble a bunch of stuff about tax and shipping not included very fast and a number flashes before your eyes. You reach for the phone and order up your own APS so you can finally finish that puzzle that you have been working on for over a year now.

oh yeah I should show a picture of my own APS delivered to me about 2 months ago. I have been extraordinarily pleased with this product and it's versatility. Honestly people this is very handy. You must get one.

My new APS hard at work. Here he has found the piece I am looking for. Sigh, it is so amazing how much easier putting puzzles together is now thanks to my APS.

Occasionally your APS ,may need to 'test' the puzzle pieces to see if it is the one you need. Do not be alarmed as this is all part of the puzzle sorting process.

this is at the beginning of the puzzle sorting process after your APS has gotten his instructions as to the pieces to look for.

Vanessa

A roller coaster of a ride

2008-11-09T12:44:00.006-07:00

Friday Co-op during science activities class we did a really fun project that lasted the entire class time. Kathy had the kids make a roller coaster out of foam tubing cut lenghtwise in half. They taped these together and were able to use chairs, boxes, cans or whatever they found to create hills and valleys and loop de loops. The kids were divided into four teams and each team made their own roller coaster. Then they competed to see which coaster was the fastest. They used marbles to speed down their coasters. Each team got their marble under about 2 seconds. Out of the four teams we saw some really cool things that went on. The team with mostly girls used styrafoam cups in various ways like you would see a watermill work, it was incredibly creative. Another team , conner was in it, had the only loop. One team went the speed route and taped their coaster way up on the wall to see if they could make it go faster than the other teams, Austin was on this team. Colin's team made valleys and such . They all had such great minds all forming their own cool versions of a roller coaster. It was so much fun. After all four teams competed we then combined them to make two teams and an even bigger coaster. It was crazy and you saw teams using the ingenuity of other teams work on both coasters.

The atmosphere was insane. They were soooooo loud. I had to get mean and raise my voice and let me tell you my voice already carries quite well and I tend to be louder than I think most times. I have no problem getting my kids attention. All around the room you saw excitment and fun and creativity and best of all learning. We kept asking the kids what type of energy the marble had at any given point. The kids were enthused and pretty competetive. It was great.
Kathy puts on one mean class. : > ) I hope to get pictures from her, she had a helper go around and take some. She also has lesson plans that coordinate this fun exciting class if you want to try it .

Vanessa

100th Post

2008-11-04T10:39:00.006-07:00

I am so excited. I can't believe this is my 100th post. I am not quite to my 1 yr anniversary for blogging and here I am at my 100th post. I really wanted to change the look of my blog for this post and perhaps it will happen later but for now it will need to stay like this because I am not html inclined, kwim. I really wanted to add another column to share some other neat things like great links with you guys and I wanted to change the background to be more solid or at least not "bleed" through my posts. Oh and I really wanted to add a pretty signature at the end of all my posts as well. I looked and looked online for ways to show me how this is done but that only got me so far. I really need someone there to ask questions and such. Perhaps one day.

I have had such a good time doing this blog. Gina introduced me to blogging not quite a yr ago. Can you believe I had never heard of it?Crazy I know. There are so many wonderful blogs that share such great things on such an array of subjects that I have spent an enormous amount of time just reading these. Some have become blogs I go back to again and again like Mrs. Darling , Kathy and others. I started this blog with the intention of sharing with our family and friends our going's ons and such. I have made great new friends and wonderful new discoveries.

I hope the next yr brings even better stuff to share with all of you guys. I love sharing information and if nothing else this is what I love about blogging. I love reading about everything from the every day life of another hs'er or mom to scrapbooking or self sufficiency. There are so many wonderful blogs about all sorts of things great and I appreciate all those that take the time out to put them out there. These blogs inspire me to do the same and share with you our everyday lives and great links or websites I find along the way.

What has been going on at my house? Well we have been getting a bit off track in hsing due to my husbands illness and my inability to cope well with it. I am getting there and well that is a whole nother Blog I want to create in the near future. We have done our math and grammar and our science since we go to co-op and do three hours of science, thank god. We had started our Native American studies but veered off and I look forward to getting the boys back on track. Yesterday they watched a film about the Aztec's. They seemed to enjoy it and we will have a discussion on it today. They continue to go to Karate which I count as P.E., Social studies, and perhaps a bit of history when sensai throws it in there. We are trucking along and I hope to get back to normal.

Vanessa

Opinions please

2008-10-25T21:14:00.003-06:00

I have been thinking about the possibility of starting a blog about my journey through my husband's illness. It has been really helpful to get it all off my chest. At the same time it has also caused other things in emotional nature to happen. What do you guys think? This blog is for my kid's and their schooling and so families far and wide can see what we are up to. I don't really want the two to mesh so to speak.
I need opinions here. I feel like I am becoming self obsessed or something and that I don't want. I don't want an all incompasing all about me thing It just helped me so very much to have it out there and I have found I am not alone and if I can help others while healing myself all in the same process it would be fantastic.
So let me have it.

Vanessa

Thank you kind friends

2008-10-23T08:33:00.009-06:00

I got such wonderful friends here and you all have been so kind. I would like to take a moment to say how much I appreciate all of you for your concern about my husband. I really makes my journey down this road much easier with such great people around me, even virtually although some of you I know in real life.

To answer some questions that came up in the comments I would like to give you a bit of information about this virtually unknown disease. I say unknown because my dh saw about 10 specialists and all didn't have a clue what exactly he had, just what he didn't. So I will give you the gist.

Buerger's disease is for those who have smoked ALOT in their life. I didn't think my hubby smoked that much but then again almost the moment we started dating he knew I didn't like the habit and therefore he didn't really do it around me. Thus my knowledge on the amount was pretty limited. He picked up smoking somewhere around age 13-14. Crazy since my oldest son is about to turn 13 and I can't fathom him smoking. Thank goodness he is hs'ed so he doesn't have those types of influences around him. Anyway about a year ago my dh's fingers started turning bluish white when it got cold. His mom has Raynaud's so we just assumed that when cold, this would continue to happen to him. The his skin started to sort of get really tight and a sore started to form, later we would discover these are called ulcers. He thinking he had an infection tried to heal it with bandages and neosporin. This actually made it open and then the fun began. It didn't go away until we went on vacation in June. Kid you not. He had this ulcer for about 4-5 months. It also started to hurt a bit. Then when it did heal it didn't seem his skin wanted to grow back so he sort of lost a chunk at the tip of his finger, hmm weird but ok. He got all cleared up while we were on vacation in South Carolina. He had no pain and things seemed to go back to normal. Then we came back and one of his toes decided to get an ulcer. He again tried bandages and neosporin and it again opened up and has yet to heal. It has been about 3 months now. About a month ago another finger started to get an ulcer and we decided not to bandage it and just put the cream to make the skin not as tight which was causing discomfort. This seems to have not made it open so we are hoping that will be a good thing. About 3 weeks ago dh noticed on the same foot his toe had an ulcer the ball of his foot had a bruise. A week and a half passed and we saw it was no bruise but what appeared to be another ulcer. It has yet to open but if it does we are in deep kimpshe(sp?). Actually dh just informed me that it opened last night (thursday), great. Now he is hobbling even more. :(

Dh is a disabled Veteran so alot has been going through the V.A. But after having seen the umpteenth specialist and no one having an answer we went to our doctor. He also didn't have an answer. We tried a herbalist that lives in Canyon City that gave Chris some crystals and such and that didn't seem to help either. He has had cat scans, X-Ray's, blood work among other things. He has been put on several antibiotics, steroids, blood thinners, pain medications and even been offered (ahem) a medical prescription for marijuana (ahem)? Seriously? Appearntly good for cronic pain? Nothing seems to work .

One day he was working , at the state hospital, and one of the doctors and older Asian gentlemen and him were talking and after about 30 min. the guy said Dh has Buerger's disease. Dh looked it up and we were astounded at how this seemed to be what he had. We brought this to a couple of the doctors he had been seeing and they all agreed. Umm what exactly am I paying you for? Sickening. Anyway at least we now have what we believe a name to the mystery ailment that has been following us for about a yr now. That in itself was something of a relief. Unfortunatly there isn't a thing that can cure this disease. The doctors can only really try to help with the symptoms. Upon research though I discovered that the ulcers go away after 1 1/2-2 yrs of appearing. Of course that is dependent upon quiting smoking. I having never been a fan of dh's smoking habit was in favor of him quitting throughout our marriage. Last yr in March he quit for good, so I thought. But apparently he has had a couple here and there ,errrg. When a doctor tells you that you will loose a digit if you don't quit smoking it makes you much more likely to do so. He was not nearly as addicted anymore so quitting the here and now cig was not a hard choice to make, especially at the expense of his digits.

We are now upon winter which is no friend of my dh and his digits. He has 3 ulcers, two on one foot and one on his finger. The doctors are unsure whether the one on his finger is now gangrene. This can happen in Buerger's disease. We are keeping a close eye on it. The last doctor he saw was amazed that he was still working. Apparently pain medication is my dh's friend and as long as his boss is not privy to him being this medicated everyone gets along just great. Umm do you see my dilemma here? These statements brought to my attention just how serious our situation is. Dh being a MAN (ugghh) didn't really let me see just how much pain he is in and just how much medication he is taking and just how much he really probably shouldn't be working. What happens if he doesn't work. I haven't the foggiest. I don't have the type of skills to bring in equal amount of money as he does. I might be able to cover our mortgage or food and gas but not everything we have coming in. Where does this leave us? It leaves us possibly getting 100% disability through the V.A. He is already 50% so it isn't such a stretch but they just don't hand that out. Plus what will happen to my 32 yr old hubby if he can never work again?? How will that affect his health? Will it be better? All doctors agree on one thing- Move to a warmer climate.

Dh's family has a homesteaded property, 50 acres, in South Carolina. The house burned to the ground 2 yrs ago. We would need to build and live in nowhere ville. They don't even have a Wal-Mart. On the other hand perhaps not having a Wal-Mart isn't such a bad thing after all. Plus I just moved a little over a yr ago so I am not looking forward to moving again. But if there is a chance it will make my hubby better I am certainly willing to try. And this ladies and gentlemen has been my predicament for the past few months, or more acuratley about a yr I just didn't realize it.

I would like to say again that I feel so blessed to have such good people around me. Thank you so much for all your prayers and warm thoughts. I really appreicate it and my heart is swelled and warm and fuzzy. I am the kind of person that likes to try and look at the positive side and well that is that I am fortunate enough to still have my dh around, crippled as he may be. He is here. That is such a good thing that having to deal with this illness doesn't seem quite as bad, kwim?

Vanessa

My Zoo grows

2008-10-21T13:59:00.007-06:00

I love my husband I really do but sometimes I just wonder why he does the stuff he does, know what I mean? About a month ago I took Austin to the Rock show in Denver where he convinced me that we needed a 6 week old kitten. I love cats, I'm a cat person what can I say. It wasn't all that hard. I tried to hold off but the cat was so cute and I have been having alot of stress lately so I caved. (smacks self on forehead).

This is Tigger. His eyes are now brownish green. I'll see if I can get a picture.

Could you say no to this face?

My dh has a mystery ailment that we think we have figured out. Unfortunately it's not looking like we will be able to cure him. We think he has Buerger's Disease. It's directly linked to smoking lots of smoking and it's quite yucky. It's not very prevalent these days but essentially those who quit smoking will be mostly symptom free in 1 1/2 -2 yrs. But if you don't quit the chances of you needing amputation are about 80%. Patients, my dh included, get these ulcers on their digits. This is accompanied by extreme pain and there ain't a thing the doctors can do at least that they have found. So most nights he doesn't sleep and some nights I don't either. He can't get comfortable, he can't sit still. He gets up and walks around. Then tries to lay down again. We even got a recliner because he was more comfortable sitting up. This lets him sleep an extra hour or two a night.

Tigger becomes a pocket pet. All the while doing a great job of distracting my hubbs.

So here I have this kitten and the greatest thing happened. At night the kitten wanted to play. I was tired and wanted to sleep but hubbs can't sleep and the kitten biting and whatnot with him for an hour takes his mind off of the intense burning, itching and pain. I couldn't tell you how I was happy I had brought this cat home. Anything that helps at this point is making my life much nicer. Here I had thought "just what I need, something else to take care of and I am adding another bill to my modest budget". After one night my thinking was thank you so much for letting me come upon this little creature that is helping my hubs.

A couple of weeks passes and what does my hubs do? Hmmm? Apparently my stress is showing in not so nice emotional ways so he gets me a puppy. UMMmm hello do you not see my plate is overflowing here? Maybe I should have gotten a platter, that would have worked much better. In his defense and since I am such a cat person this is really the only type of dog I have ever said I would really want. But I meant when we were old and grey and our kids out the house not now. So I have two new babies in my home that do an awesome job of distracting my hubby from his various ailments. For this I am grateful. I am going to share pictures of our new additions. Oh and for those who are wondering my puppy is a "Dappled Dachshund" and he has stolen my heart.

And this my friends is Snoopy. I liked Harley but he answered to Snoopy so Snoopy it is. Isn't he a doll.

Tigger and Snoopy are becoming best friends.

Vanessa

Thankful to great teachers

2008-10-12T20:57:00.004-06:00

This week has been a bit stressful. On Monday night I found out I would be teaching the Science Activities class at our co-op. My friend Kathy had a new grandson to see and wouldn't be able to make it. The good news was that we have been sort of teaching together although I must admit Kathy has been doing a huge chunk of the work with me sort of helping out a bit. This meant I knew what the class entailed and sort of what was planned for the upcoming class. Kathy sent me the list of activities that we were going to do and I went with it. It didn't dawn on me how much work Kathy was doing on her own until I was expected to do just such work. Okay I wasn't expected to but she had laid the groundwork for the class and I wanted to uphold that. I went through the list of things I would need and ended up with about 20 things that I needed to bring. I got really stressed at how I would pull this off.

So most of the week I spent worrying. I don't like being unorganized, it only stresses me out and makes me all weird. Unfortunatly I grew up with an unorganized mom whom I learned many bad habits from because I didn't know any other way. I have since worked on that and am finding more and more that I do like organization quite a bit. Anyway I knew I needed help in the classroom because I noticed if I put the kids in charge of a experiment/station then they didn't get to do the other experiments/stations. On the flip side of that the kids for the most part enjoyed being helpers and that in itself is beneficial.

I asked parents for volunteers to help with the stations but I was late in the game so I didn't get many mom's to volunteer. I did get one mom who was willing to take one station off my hands and she got her friend to do another one. This meant I still needed to get the kids to help out.

I put Colin in charge of flubber/silly putty station which was really two experiments in one but we had done this at home so he wanted that one. Austin got one with oil and water and food coloring that we had done the day before at home. It turned out neat and he knew what to do. Conner wanted to do a Krampf experiment that was more of a trick on how you can fit through an index card. I was in charge of looking at bubbles, and the other moms where in charge of slick sliding soap and fun with gas. So it was chemistry class.

At first it was a bit chaotic. I made the fatal mistake of assuming since this was the 3rd class the kids knew the drill and would wait while we got ready. It took quite a bit longer than I had intended and the kids got bored and played and got loud. We soon got a few of the stations set up and the rest came to follow quickly. Halfway through class the kids were engaged and we got an additional helper. At the end of class I felt it went well if not a bit crazy. The mom's helped clean up and we talked about how we would work out the kinks and get the class just running smoothly in time for the semester to be over. LOL.

I am constantly vigilant for learning opportunities for my children but also for myself. In this way I lead by example and my brain doesn't rot away from never being stretched any further than where it is at that particular moment. On this day I learned so very much. If unprepared you stress out alot. If prepared you don't stress nearly as much but on your first time doing something there is a nervousness involved. I think alot of my stress came from my feelings of inadequacy. I thought the class wouldn't go as well as it had with Kathy in charge. She is a great lady and so great with children. I am good with my children and with their friends but with 22 kids in the class I felt a bit overwhelmed at making the class work efficiently, having the kids learn something all the while having a great time during a one hour session. I learned about alot of things that day, mostly about how little I know or how very much I don't know. I'm okay with that because I feel I have reached that point where you really stop acting like you know about everything and start trying to find the answers to your questions. I have been there for some time. I feel more comfortable in the classroom setting in our co-op . Which is fantastic as I would like to teach a class perhaps next semester.

There is a new appreciation for teachers in general and of course of our co-op. These great mom's must prepare their class well in order for it to run smoothly. In that I hope to learn from these women about what makes a great class and how to best prepare for it. Of course nothing is foolproof is it? I will always expect surprises along the way to learn from for future reference. In the meantime I will attempt to lend a better helping hand to our great teacher Kathy for future classes by taking more of the workload.
We had a relativly laid back week the rest of the time. We did our schoolwork and our housework. A new week begins shortly with new possiblities. What was your week like?

Vanessa

"Newsworthy" trip

2008-10-03T10:31:00.013-06:00

Thursday brought us to our local newspaper to see just how it all works. Our tour guide , Gregoria Vallejo told us all about the newspaper it's history and all sorts of other facts. The paper has been in operation since 1868 and puts out 50,000 copies per day that reach as far east as the Kansas border, west to Salida, south to Raton and north to Colorado Springs. They go through 72 rolls per week each roll weighing in at 1,700pounds of paper.And just how many people does it take to put out all those papers? 225 people to be exact. I don't think it includes the newspaper boys and such but that is still alot of people. We spoke with one of the reporters doing a golf piece and I noticed that all the computers are Mac's . We inquired about this and he said that most newspapers use mac's because they are easier to use. Huh I didn't know that I still don't understand the difference to be quite honest. The newspaper also boasts a printing machine that is so new they have only 5 in the USA and theirs is the 2nd one. It puts the paper on aluminum sheets and then prints from that. It really simplifies the way the old machine had done it. She explained that to the kids but I was busy yapping at how cool the machines and such were I missed most of this part. The printing press uses only 4 basic colors to do all its printing.

cyan (blue)
magenta (red)
yellow
black

She showed us how this works, it was really cool. She had a sample picture and put the yellow part down, it was on an overhead type plastic. The she put the red over that picture and you could see that it was a mom and daughter. Finally she put the blue one and it shadowed it and the black one came last and it made the picture crisp. I think us moms found it alot more interesting then the kids although they did like it too. We also covered a small bit of history with the Gutenberg printing press that mechanized printing. Here is a lesson plan for the gutenberg press.
http://www.education-world.com/a_tsl/archives/00-2/lesson0019.shtml

The paper has it's own fitness center and still has some of their old machines around like a muesum room, they were fascinating to look at. We were treated to pads of paper, the sunday comics which won't be out for 2 more days as well. Of course I took an insane amount of pictures I think it was around 50 , I won't bore you with every single last one but here are some of the best.

Our Tour guide Gregoria showing the kids about the paper
The newsroom. I was unsuccesful at getting all the signs hanging showing what each section was.
Meeting a reporter as he tells us about the golf piece he is working on
A little information about how they store all the old papers and where
This is how they used to store them. They bound them and made them books. Kathy really wanted to smell them(wink)

What is this?

I know this is an old video recorder. Cool huh?

A little information about how papers used to be printed in years past.

They hand carved rubber stamps to printing.Wow what alot of work and craftsmenship. These are a set of wedding announcments

Kathy points out neat window art of some near and dear comics

Here is the printing press with the aluminum sheets .

The boys look on as we are show how this all works

Some of the aluminum shets set out to be ready when needed.

The yellow picture first

Now the red and you can see it's a mom and daughter

Blue defines it even more and black gives it that crisp edge

Do they look like they are having fun?

Storage room for all the rolls of paper they need. They did have recycled paper.

Her the kids hear about the paper rolls . Did you know they come from Canada?

This machine assembles the paper.

Vanessa

Apple Farm Field Trip

2008-09-28T08:15:00.015-06:00

I love field trips. Every time we go somewhere the kids learn so much and so do I. We meet incredible people and have a good time. We have never been to this particular Apple orchard but it was a really great place. On Wednesday we went with our home school group to the Apple Orchard in Penrose. It wasn't that far away. The farmer and his wife own a 5 acre parcel upon which they grow apples, pumpkins, raspberries, grapes, honey and a few other things. They converted their garage into a shop to sell their wares out of and it is the cutest place.

Our groups were divided in half and our half went with the farmer. He talked a little bit about the original founder of Penrose, Spencer Penrose. We rode around in a hayride wagon attached to his tractor. We saw the little apple trees. There are some that are 30+ yrs old and some others that they have planted that are only 5-10 yrs old. Apple trees only produce for so long. The frost unfortunately had a huge negative effect on the apple production leaving only a handful of apples to grow in the orchard. We saw the way that the farm is irrigated. Its really quite simple. There is a dam that runs water into pipes that run under all of penrose and the people hook up their pipes to the system and flood their land. It works although some have a much better irrigation system in place. Our next stop was the pumpkin patch where we learned about the female and male plant, the kids know the difference now and we got to see the pumpkins that are still green. We rode through the rest of the farm and saw his raspberry bushes and grape vines and his honey bee hives (made me sooo nervous since I still don't carry an EpiPen).

We then met the farmers wife who showed us the proper way to pick an apple and how the apple sorter works. All the kids got to line up and work the apple sorter and then they got to keep 3 apples to take with them. there is a spot to dump all the apples and a conveyor belt moves them along. There are two lines and the bad apples get put in one and the good ones go through to the end where they are checked again by the workers on that end. The kids really liked the apple sorter. After this we moved on to the apple press machine. Her again is a spot to dump all the apples and then they get ground up and dumped into this wooden bucket. the wooden bucket then gets moved down the machine under the press. All the kids took a turn at pressing the apples. The juice came out of the wooden bucket and flowed down the machine over the end into whatever receptacle you choose, they had a bowl with a sieve to catch any bigger pieces that made it through.

We all got treated to a doughnut and fresh apple cider. The mom's took a moment to enjoy the serenity and peek at the cute shop. The couple sells fruit and veges, jam, syrup, soap and honey. It is tasteful , cute and heartwarming little place. The couple are so warm, sweet ,very helpful and willing to answer questions. This is their retirement he from the forest service and her from teaching. What they sell pays for the farm and a few other things and they seem to enjoy every minute of it. It was such a great trip.

A little history about the railroad and some awesome pictures.
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/f?hawp:0:./temp/~ammem_nT4g:
http://www.florenceandcripplecreek.com/history.html

Some Facts about Spencer and Julie Penrose
http://www.gilpincountynews.com/20070628/spencer_penrose.htm
http://www.cssd11.k12.co.us/BRISTOL/Bristol_Wall/1900/front_1900_penrose.htm

The kids on the back of the hayride wagon

More of the kids just hanging out
The farmer explaining the male and female flower of the pumpkin plant.
The kids listen intently to the farmer
More of the kids on the back of the hayride wagon

The farmer's wife shows us how to pick an apple and why it's done that way.The kids look through a box of apples
The apple sorter
The kids wait to sort apples

Conner inspects an apple for goodness
Quality assurance
The shop

A frozen honeycomb

Colin presses the apples

Kids putting apples into the apple press machine

Austin puts in some apples
Conner takes a turn pressing apples
Colin eating an apple and working the apple press
This is what happens when I ask my boys to smile for a picture. Someone has to make a goofy face.
The kids sit around and chat and so do the mom's

Vanessa

Tuesday Review

2008-09-23T08:13:00.004-06:00

I am joining Angela for Tuesday Review.

Ever have problems with the tedious task of getting your kids to learn their multiplication facts? Well I found a product that works and works fast. Times tales is fantastic. We got this last yr and in one afternoon my kids knew their 6-9 facts. It is ingenious. There are the numbers and they make cute stories and pictures to go with them. There are flashcards that help the kids remember their facts and even a test of sorts. I will say that the kids may need a refresher occasionally but that is okay because every cent spent on this product is worth it. Instead of hours and hours of just repeating facts we spent one afternoon. Really just one and they had it. I honestly wasn't sure about it at first but it worked. It uses mnemonics's to help kids learn their facts.

I see now that they added the 3's & 4's to their product and it is a bit more expensive. I purchased it for about $15.00, if I remember correctly. It is now $30.00 ($29.99 but really who wouldn't say $30.00??). You also get the division portion of the program which helps you memorize same facts in division form. We didn't do this but I still have the program and I think we need to review anyway so I may throw that in there. At any rate anyone teaching their kids their multiplication facts will have their life made much easier and fun by this product.

Vanessa

Yum&my Math

2008-09-22T10:35:00.006-06:00

M&M good
This math is great, mom!

Graphing& probability
addition & subtraction
Multiplication & Division too
What is the probability of getting brown?
What is the probability of getting green?
How many more blue are there than yellow?
What is the mean, mode and mediun?

Last week we went to the library and I happened upon M&M math. Hmmm I thought to myself I wonder if this is any good and the kids will like it. I can say for certain that the kids were looking forward to their math lesson. They really couldn't wait. At first I thought that this was a bit above their level but the more I got into it the more I realized all the math it encompassed. There are a range of math lessons in this tiny book. Basic addition,subtraction, multiplication and division are there. But there is also graphing and probability. If you look past all that you can even add some other neat things in there that will make math lessons of all kinds. The best part is having your kids excited about math and not being able to wait till you get to the lesson.

We somehow ended up at the library again and I got the hershey fractions as well. I liked it too but not nearly as well as the m&m one. We still enjoyed it and it was a fun way to look at fractions and cover some good concepts like improper fractions, mixed numbers, lowest terms/reducing, what fractions are the same as others when you do reduce them, what whole numbers or one looks like as a fraction among other great math concepts.

Our candy bar vs theirs

Time to "open" to your lesson

One whole, 1/1, or 1

Breaking it apart. There are 12 pieces so one whole can be 12/12

Kenai helps with the lesson? He smelled the chocolate and wanted some so he came to sit and see if he can snatch any chocolate. (chocolate is poisonous to your dog, DO NOT give them any)

Breaking down some fractions

One last fraction and it's time to eat

Vanessa

Nature hike

2008-09-18T07:04:00.015-06:00

Our hs group set up this field trip for a nature hike in Pueblo Park at the Mountain Park Enviormental Center. I love anything to do with the environment and we love hiking so this was a definite yes. The center has plenty of Ranger led hikes, summer camps and a Earth studies program.
We met for a picnic at the park before our 2 hour Ranger led hike. Ranger Dave came out and talked to the parents to give us all an idea of what we were going to do and we got on this cute bus that had the most terrific bumper stickers in it. We took a short ride to the trail head and Ranger Dave gathered all the kids and introduced himself. He talked of the history of the park and the Indians that once lived there. Ranger Dave played a wooden flute and it was very neat all the kids listened intently and not one, not even the little toddlers, made a peep. We learned of the vegetation such as the ponderosa pine and the ponderosa beetle that had destroyed a decent section of the park.

Ranger Dave share animal track molds, animal skulls and animal fur with us and the kids loved them all. You would think after having touched those types of things at countless Park center's they would eventually tire of this but apparently not. He had the kids do an quiet exercise where they all spread out, were quiet as a mouse and listened to nature. They put a small x in the center of the page to represent themselves and if they heard a grasshopper in front of them they wrote or drew a grasshopper in front of the x. The amazing thing was the kids actually did this and were quiet. I suppose Ranger Dave telling them that often when he does this exercise with a class an animal will appear because they are being quiet. The boys talked about this exercise quite a bit and we decided we wanted to try it again sometime when we could sit as long as we wanted. Ranger Dave was so nice and answered all of the kids and grown up questions. We saw a fire outlook post on top of one of the mountains, it didn't seem far and Ranger Dave said he would put together another hike with older kids(8+) to the post if we were interested. Um if we were interested??? ya think?? yes we were and so were a couple of the other parents. I put myself in charge of setting this up since Gina set up this one. As always I must share pictures. My husband says that I take so many pictures we can make a flip book "it's like being there". That's a whole nother post for now I know some of you will appreciate my over the top picture taking. Would it be better if I told you I didn't even share them all?

Horseshoe Lodge and ranger Dave.

The trail we took. I love signage and take pictures of them all the time. It helps when I am scrap booking as I can remember where that was and the names of things. Plus it makes a great title for any scrapbook page.

Ranger Dave talks a little about the park

Ranger Dave and his Flute. Conner wants one.

Austin checks out a bobcat footprint track mold
Colin is intrigued by this Deer skull
Conner found this coyote skull very interesting
The whole gang, aren't the kids cute??

Stopping along the trail in the shade.
Conner shows off the Bear track mold
Witches broom grows on White fur tree

Colin listens during the quiet exercise

Conner took his spot under this tree to listen to nature

The Deer we saw on the way out

We saw this on the way in and I really wanted a photo because i thought it was so neat. So I stopped on the way out. I think the other mom's thought I might be having car trouble or kid trouble but no I wanted to get the picture. Is it considered a totem pole? This one has the house numbers on it. Isn't it pretty. Great work whoever did it.

Since we were about 30 min away from Bishop's Castle we decided to go there as well. We did go a few yrs ago but the kids couldn't even remember it so it was time to go back. Halfway there the boys wanted to turn around. It is sort of the type of place you intend to go to not just see on the side of the road and decide to stop. You go on mountain roads that go back and forth with nothing but nature around you and perhaps the odd farm here and there. You do sort of start to feel like "are we there yet?". When we went last time I remember it taking forever too although it didn't really about 40 min. The other thing that seemed to have changed is the signs. There used to be all these signs leading up to the castle warning of all sorts of strange things. I remember warnings of nails in the road put there by the gov't because the gov't didn't want anyone to go to Bishop's Castle. HUh??? umm I think the gov't has a few other things to deal with beside one guy out in the middle of nowhere. But to each his own.

As crazy as I think the guy is I do think that what he has done is amazing. For one person alone to have built this amazing Castle is just mind numbing. There are turrets and iron work. A dragon head on the castle a bridge at the top of it and he is currently working on a moat to surround his castle. The imagination that went into this and being able to make it real just makes me wonder about the man himself. I think it would be quite interesting to talk to him and the kids sure wanted to. I'm sure I wouldn't be the first person to want to talk to him , nor the last. Anyway here are some pictures that just show you how magical this place it and what great vision Bishop has.

A bridge in progress.

A miniature model of Bishop Castle. He has pretty much completed this portion.

The trees are hiding much of the castle

One man built this by himself. Truly amazing.

The Dragon head. the boys said it was a snake.

Austin in all his silliness.

The inside of the second floor

Close up of the stained glass

A better view of the Castle

The moat in progress

One of the last remaining signs

Vanessa

Little slice of Heaven for Austin

2008-09-13T17:09:00.006-06:00

There are just some places that bring out the best in your kids. Those special places you go back to again and again because the time spent there brings us all such wonderful memories and bonding moments. It's at these places that I really really enjoy my children and all the wonderful smiles, laughs, wonder, awe and inspiration it brings me and my children. I have been privileged to find a few of these and some extra special treats that come around only once a yr.

When we went to Yellowstone one of the gift shops Austin found his "First Box of Rocks" literally. That was the name on the box. In 3rd grade he got a rock collection as part of science class in an egg carton. That year we also discovered the Rock Schow in Denver and have gone every yr. In subsequent yrs we found Rock shows in Colorado springs, Lake George and golden.Our 1st yr of hs we joined our hs group in a Science Olympiad team where Austin competed in the Rock & Mineral portion of the competition. He was so excited when the team placed well enough to go to state and that competition was in Golden at the School of Mines. Austin loved the School of mines and we explored the museum and the surrounding town of Golden which we found very sweet and quaint. He immediately said he wanted to go to college there. What a goal to have so early on.

My last semester of College I attended a Geology class that bored me to tears in hopes to have great conversations with him. I can't believe it worked. We talked about many things Geology related and it was such grown up talk but he followed it all and learned so well, it was truly amazing and actually had me like the subject a bit as well. My teacher even let him go on a field trip with us that took us all over Colorado Springs to look at the geology in the area. Austin still has my book from that College level class as part of his Geology book collections.

As many pictures as I take I can not believe I have not taken pictures here before. Maybe I have and it is escaping me at the moment. At any rate I am pleased to share what Austin might consider a little slice of heaven right here on earth just for him. The Denver Rock show. There are gems, minerals, fossils, gold mining, small freebies, gem and mineral clubs, teacher resources, local rock shops, country wide rock shops and international ones too. There is Mr. Bones which is a T-Rex skeleton sized down a bit and made into a costume of sorts that a guy walks around with. The best part is that the guy can move the T-Rex's head and open his mouth. Essentially he goes around and pretends to bite kid's heads.All kids adore it and Austin is no exception to the fact. It amazes me that at almost 13 he still truly enjoys this.

around the Denver Merchandise Mart where the show is held vendors put up tents in parking lots and you can scan and purchase their wares as well. We didn't know this till last yr and this yr I found that they were cheaper but not always better. The same applies for the show they may be more expensive but that doesn't mean that they are better. We got to see Mr. Bones, gold pan and I talked to some groups that were there for educational purposes. I got a teacher packet at one place and some great handouts at others.

We got up at 6, got Derek (Austin's friend) at 8. Stopped by the German store by 8:30 and got to the show by 10:00. There was a huge line and so we opted to start with the outdoor vendors across the street. We then went to the rock show and the shopping started in full earnest. There were specimens to be looked at, examined, priced out. We kept in mind the rocks Austin already owned(how can one kid own that many rocks? and how can they all be so different?). I said we should print out a copy of his rock file once he updated it(he has a excel worksheet that lists all his rocks, what country they are from and other facts). We absolutely had to go gold panning. The great thing about that is it's free, there are people there to help teach you how to gold pan and you get to keep what you find. Although it is minuscule you do find a bit. I'm sure you would get a bit more lucky out in a river somewhere, but just a bit. There was the Fluorescent exhibit which seemed a bit bigger than last yrs where there are rocks that upon putting them under black light will glow, its really cool. This is all just on the mineral side of the show.

Over on the fossil part is an array of fossils that any collector is sure to appreciate. You can purchase actual dinosaur poop (we did), shark teeth, leaf fossils, tripod-like fossils, fish fossils and for the not average collector who has tons of money, and I mean tons, you can get your own dinosaur fossil in shale. There are the magnetic rocks that Austin went crazy for last yr. Mr. Bones home base is there and you see they have two different costumes. We generally don't go on this side since Austin is not into fossils that much.

As always going to Denver tires me out so much. I don't recall being this exhausted when I lived just 45 min closer ,perhaps my age is starting to catch up to me. Either way by the time I get back into the car and know I am going home it's almost like when you have a big burst of energy and then there is that inevitable whoosh where you are truly exhausted and want a nap. That is how I feel when I get in the car going home from Denver. I love going but boy that trip home I just can't wait to get back home. I loved going to the show and spending time with Austin and his best buddy but I am just as glad I am home. We had such a wonderful time and some great talks along the way. There were so many great smiles and terrific moments I am glad to reminisce over. I have shared a little with you guy's too.

Vanessa

Look who stopped by

2008-09-12T07:16:00.007-06:00

A while ago a praying mantis was in our house to be exact in my bill basket. It was so much bigger than I really ever thought a praying mantis was. We got a container to catch it and to show the kids since they were out playing then. When they came in they were all awestruck by the creature that just popped into our house. We ended up letting him out into our front yard and took a few snaps.

Isn't he just great. Honestly he is huge.

What an incredible creature

Yesterday Austin was in the back yard with the dog and playing with a stick. He hit our yucca and there was a strange noise. He told hit it a few more times and out flew a bat. Now this was very exciting for us because we studied Bats last school yr after our trip to Carlsbad Caverns. The boys had adopted a bat and we learned about them through the ranger program there. The Caverns have Mexican free tail bats migrate there every yr. Through all of this we have come to appreciate what bats can do for us and what amazing creatures they are.
The yucca in our yard He flew into my wisteria vine and hung out there the rest of the day. It was so hard to get a picture of him because I didn't want to disturb him anymore then we already had. They are pretty fragile creatures
We thought it was a bumble bee bat or a fruit bat. At any rate its a small bat.

The boys looking at the bat. I made sure they were very quiet.

Here are some other sites you may want to check out.
http://www.batcon.org/home/default.asp

http://www.kidzone.ws/animals/bats/index.htm

http://www.defenders.org/wildlife_and_habitat/wildlife/bats.php

http://www.cccoe.k12.ca.us/bats/

http://www.bats4kids.org/

http://www.eparks.org/wildlife_protection/wildlife_facts/bats/bat_house.asp

Vanessa

Math/Conner update

2008-09-09T21:04:00.004-06:00

Upon much consideration and weighing all my options and of course all the great ideas everyone came up with I have come to a decision about Conner and Math. We are taking a step back.....way back. I have gone back to our 3rd grade edition of the math text he was using (k-12's). I am also going to be looking into fun short math games to do whatever lessons I can and to get him liking it. Of course I still think that his curric for math needs changing and I am still trying to figure out which way to go with that.

It was not easy to have him go two yrs back but what a Friend of mine was saying made sense. I can have him do the chapter tests until he gets stuck and frustrated at which point we will do the chapter. In the meantime it should all be fairly easy for him boosting his confidence in math which is what I want. Also as long as we do the chapter tests he won't be in 3rd grade math long he will move in a much faster pace again boosting his confidence. That is my main goal right now to get him to have that confidence that he can do it and with any luck do it without my being there for every question. Of course there will need to be the explanation of the lesson and help on questions he gets stuck on but overall I need to have him be a bit more independent as the other kids need help too.

Alot happens in 3rd grade math. Fractions are introduced and some geometry as well among a few other things I can't quite remember at the moment, hey it's late;-) So the reasoning behind going back two yrs instead of one just makes more sense for Conner. When we started hs'ing he entered 3rd grade and we went with k-12. The thing about k-12 that I have learned since is that they are quite advanced course of study. Conner went from ps 2nd grade to k-12 3rd grade. I didn't realize what was happening although I was watching it the whole time and it was progressively getting worse. I need to be able to help him help himself. I think this is just the thing to help Conner.

Conner was none too happy to be put back into 3rd grade math. I apparently wasn't as sneaky with my conversations as I had thought. He overheard some of what was going on. Of course I'm sure he heard his name and it got his attention and he wanted to know what was going on. He made a bit of a fuss and then I explained to him my reasoning and he seemed okay with it upon hearing he wouldn't be in 3rd grade math for the entire yr just till he got done with the book. He was even happier knowing it would basically only involve the chapter tests unless he got stuck and I felt he needed more in depth study on said subject.

We have done 2 days and I am still helping him out quite a bit I think it comes from his low esteem in this area. He is so used to needing help he asks before he tries and most times he can get it. The great thing is that I am seeing him already not ask for as much help but just clarification on what I want done. If he gets something wrong he generally sees what he did with me asking him to look at it and tell me what he did wrong. He will make some silly mistake and I will grade his work and he will ask why is this wrong? I will say look at it and he will and then he will smile and say oh I added instead of subtracted...oops (started to wear smile, great moment)
.After only 2 days I am already starting to see that my plan may well have been exactly what we needed to do at the moment. I hope to see it continue in the days/weeks to come. We are still having frustrating moments but that's okay because they by no means compare to what was. This make me feel like I am on the right track and that we will be back on our "regular" track soon with much less fuss.

Vanessa

Co-op

2008-09-08T20:45:00.004-06:00

I found a great little group just 30 min. west of me, ok my friend Kathy found it. The point is that this group meets for park days and puts together a co-op that we managed to get into. I must admit I wasn't sure I would get in as there was a waiting list but we got in and I was so excited.

The mom's I have been so sweet and great to get to know and have varying degrees of ages among their children. Best of all the group has alot of boys my boys' ages which is really great and we have enjoyed getting to know them and building new friendships.

Our first day of class will be Friday and here is the schedule.

1st hour -criminal science

2nd hour- science activities

3rd hour- understanding space

I am running the supply closet and co-teaching in the science activity class(2nd hour) and sewing class (3rd hour). I must admit it was selfish of me to help teach in the class, sewing class, when my sewing skills are still a work in progress.

The science class is being taught by my great friend Kathy who has come up with amazing ideas. She decided to do the classes based on the 5 senses theme. MY kids love science experiments and I believe they learn alot on just about any experiment but when you tie it together I think it helps the kids grasp a few concepts even better.

So the hunt is on for science experiments that

1. don't take hours

2. don't cost a fortune

3. is geared towards 4-6th grade

The problem comes in that two of our boys are in 7th grade and we are fairly sure that there will be some 3rd and some 7th graders. This leads to problems because now we need tomake sure the experiments don't bore the older kids and that they aren't way over their heads too. Plus this all needs to correlate to the 5 senses.

So what did I do?? I went to the library and stocked up on all sorts of books. Yes I came out with more then I went in with. There were some really neat things there that I thought were very usable. I will share what we came up with soon and of course all the fun pictures.

Vanessa

Happenings this week

2008-09-04T14:25:00.006-06:00

For our Units I want to cover

_Sand Dunes National park
_Ft. Sumter
_Ft. Pulaski
_Dolphins
_Loggerhead turtles
_Ocean
_Sheldon Church
_Lighthouses
_Charles town landing
_Airplanes
_Early American history
_Beach
_International Town

At least that is what I have so far. I think it will be a work in progress but this is most definitely going to keep me busy for a while. I tend to try for a across the curriculum approach so that we don't have to utilize the traditional textbooks for a majority of our curriculum. We are currently working on the Ocean and Early Americans. Come to think of it I may need to break down Early american history a bit. That way I can check it off.
I came home with a huge stack of books for each of these to cover.

For our Ocean Unit I got

Oceans by Adele Richardson
Where Am I? by Moira Butterfield
Oceans by Anna O'Mara
I wonder why :The sea is salty by Anita Ganeri
Oceans for every kid by Janice VanCleave
The Ocean by Mel Higginson
World books Young Scientist: Planet Earth. Water
The Voyager's Stone by Robert Kraske
Waves, tides and currents by Daniel Rogers
DK Eyewitness books: Ocean
Bill Nye the Science guy' Big blue ocean
DK Online: Ocean by John Woodward
Dk Eyewitness: Seashore (video)
National Geographic Deep sea dive (video)

For Our History/Early American History
We are in the Indian/inuit/cliff dweller phase

Living with the Eskimos by Bernard Planche
The Cheyenne by sally Lodge
Arctic Memories by Normee Ekoomiak
Indians of the Arctic and Subarctic
The Pueblo by Mary Englar
Pueblo Storyteller by Diane Hoyt-Goldsmith
Eskimo Boy by Russ Kendall
Ultimate Field trip by Susan Goodman
Indians of the Plateau and great basin by Victoria Sherrow
Ancient Indians of the southwest by Alfred Tamarin
Southwest Indians by Mir Tamim Ansary
A Walk in the tundra by Rebecca Johnson
Children of the midnight sun by Tricia Brown
Indians of the Southwest by Lisa Sita
Native Crafts by Maxine Trottier
The Apache Indians by Bill Lund
the Iroquois Indians by Bill Lund
the Navajo by Therese DeAngelis
The Cherokee by Barbara McCall
Indian Handcrafts by C. Keith Wilbur

We are doing introductions and such and I can't wait to show you some of the work we have been doing and share some of the neat finds online and on land (wink). Of course if there are any things that you would like to share to make these units even more special please do so. I am considering two field trips to end these units one is very likely to the Auarium and the other I'm not so sure about to a Native American Reservation. (my reservations are 1. not sure where or how far one is 2. I don't want the kids to think of it as a zoo if you kwim)

Vanessa

Jackpot

2008-09-02T08:52:00.005-06:00

For Labor day a friend and I head 45 min. north to hit a few good thrift stores that I know of from my days of living there. We lucked out as everyone was having a good sale and we were on the hunt for good books to build libraries for our children. We went to
Goodwill
Salvation Army
Arc
I spent a total of $68.50. I walked away with 116 books. I even needed a box at Goodwill and felt like I was robbing them. I figured out how much I roughly spent on each book at the different stores to see where I got the best deal.

The Salvation Army wins with $0.30 per book

Second place goes to Goodwill with $0.49 per book

The ARC was the priciest at $0.96 per book

At goodwill I found some really cool Old Classics that were just amazing. They have definitions on the side of the story for the harder words or words that only apply to that particular story. I should take a picture for you. I am trying to read Classic Stories to the boys this yr. I found some workbooks called Math Mania that have fun activities related to math. I think they will work nicely for the boys especially for Conner. I found each of the kids books that I think they will enjoy. Austin got some books on skateboarding. Conner got yet more Magic Schoolhouse books and a book with some old stamps in it. Colin got several cookbooks to replace the one he lost when our basement flooded and a couple of survival story books. I managed to bag several classics's like

20,000 leagues under the sea

huckleberry fin

Paul Bunyan

Daniel Boone

The yearling

The black stallion

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

The casebook of Sherlock Holmes

Heidi

Oliver twist

Grimm's fairly tales

the secret garden

are just a few of the fantastic books I found. The most amazing part is I found 3 German books and 1 dutch book. Dutch is very closely related to German, close enough for a German to probably get along just fine there without too much trouble. I was amazed and happy to provide my kids with these books. We were gone for the entire day. We planned on half the day and time just got away from us.

These are my stacks.
The classics with the definitions on the side. Such a neat find.
I really found some great books and for such a bargain.

Here are the German books I found.

I feel like I hit the jackpot. But overspent my hs budget for this month. I firmly believe that if I surround my kids with great books then they will read more. Of course I hope that will happen.

Vanessa

MY frustration

2008-08-29T10:29:00.004-06:00

Here is my frustration, perhaps I have not been patient enough, perhaps I have gone the wrong way around to teaching math, perhaps there is an underlying problem I am not seeing whatever it is I need to get it fixed.
For our 3rd yr hs math has yet again become a problem with Conner. I don't understand but it's as if just the thought of math gives him a completely different personality. Today is a good example.
His lesson today covered Place Value, yes simple basic place value. Here are his problems

Write each in standard form
4000+500+60+9
400,000+300+50
60,000,000+3,000,000+4000,000+5000+7
1,000,000,000+200,000,000+50,000,000+300+9

Write in expanded form
8998
15,243
672,115
700,946
13,004,205
2,005,940,000

That's it.
Here is how it went. Immediately upon opening the book to the page required he asked for help.
He then needed help for each and every problem until the last two at which point he was finally getting it. But if I were to ask him to do this tomorrow I'm not sure I wouldn't need to help him again.
We tried Saxon but he didn't like it and didn't use it long enough although I think it would help him immensely. He is using K-12 grade 5 Math. The problem here is that when he gets to a quiz he won't remember half of it.
It is sooooooo frustrating sitting there with him helping him through every single problem. It's as if he can't correlate moving from a small number to a bigger number doing the same thing. It is frustrating for the two other boys because if they need help they generally have to wait for me to finish with conner. So I hop between kids although the other two don't require nearly as much help. Basically just Colin and he gets upset when I am constantly helping Conner and he has to wait for me to be done. I don't make him wait for the whole lesson just one problem but it seems that it takes forever.

I saw another math program called Teaching Textbooks where it comes with CD's that gives lectures, practice problems and goes over every single problem. So if you miss number 16 in lesson 23 you can pop in the CD and it will show you how to do that problem. I think that would help him alot. I also like Saxon for him as it goes over a little of everything to keep up on learned stuff so you don't forget how to do it. I don't know if I should switch but if I have to take another year of this much frustration I'm not doing much to help him in math. I can't do that to him or to myself, it's very wearing.
This is one example. For clarification this happens 3-5 days out of the 5 days of school. He is at the point where I think he thinks he can't so he asks for help before he even tries. That in itself frustrates me as I would like to see him at least try. I obviously need to do something to build his confidence in this area. I just don't know how. I also need to find a comprehensive math program that works for him. Again I'm not sure what that is but I have an inkling that it's not the math he is using now.

Vanessa

Story Maker's Contest

2008-08-27T07:50:00.004-06:00

I just read about this from a local group but perhaps your local PBS is having the same contest too.
PBS is sponsoring a writting contest. This is for middle level grades -6,7 and 8th. It is a short story contest for young authors. Stories must be submitted by Oct. 10th 2008. Stories will be judged on creativity, originality and storytelling. The story must be a minimun of 700 words with a max being 1,000. Test must be Times New Roman 12 pt, double spaced. You can count words like a, an and the in the count.There will be prizes to the top three winners in each grade level.
I love this idea. It's a neat way to get kids to write and have new experiences with their stories instead of the same stuff like showing mom and dad and perhaps grandma and grandpa. It makes the story bigger. I have at least one story teller in my house that I know can write a good story.
You can check out the contest and rules and stuff here

Story Maker's Contest

Vanessa

The state fair

2008-08-26T10:29:00.009-06:00

My boys with funnel cake and and elephant ear.

MmMMM fair food. Can you smell it?

Yesterday we went to the state fair and had a fantastic time. We looked at the 4-h exhibits and the kids got really interested in alot of the things they could do through this program. We saw cakes kids as young as made that were decorated nicer than I could do, amazing what those kids did. There were rocket's and wood projects, leather work and sewing and all sorts of cooking. Colin was really interested in the cooking/baking stuff and I think he wants to enter that for sure. He also saw something I didn't know they did Lego's! He really wants to do that. Conner liked the leather work and the pies , he wants to enter a pecan pie! Austin liked the rockets and the guns. We will have to see if we can make all this work into our hs. I'm sure it will be a great experience.

They loved all the animals especially the baby animals and we discovered Conner was really good at roping. He only did this one other time before and that was at the last fair last yr. Now he wants to join the ranks of the rodeo folk, hmmm? In this part of the fair I happened upon little newspapers called "Colorado Reader". There were about 3 different ones I found each with it's own topic. These were all produced by the Department of Agriculture. I checked out their website and found they had done these readers monthly since 2005. I think I am going to see about getting them for our hs. They are really neat you can check them out yourself here

Department of Agriculture

There are a bunch of clickable links under Resouces. I would tell you all about them but that would take forever. From the little I have looked at this is an amazing resource that will surley add lots of fun into our hs.

Colorado Reader

these are the readers and it is divided by subject and everything.

We also had a great time with the rest of the fair. The boys caught up with some friends we hadn't seen in a while and we saw a sea lion show and a tiger show. We had fun delicous fair food, I mean would it really be the fair without funnel cake? We walked alot and I milked a cow, it was so easy. A baby cow tried to suck Austin's finger and we saw a baby chick crack it's egg although the boys were too impatient to see it get the shell apart and come out.

Sand sculpture. this yrs theme is Politic's.

Sand shack. This ride is reminds me of "Grease" at the end.

"Tell me about it, stud"

Conner on Bumber Cars

That big swing dragon thing

The boys with a Robot that walked around

Colin eats his turkey leg, mmmmmm we love those turkey legs.

The sea lion show.

Conner ropes him a cow?? He did so well they didn't believe him when he said this was only his second time doing this.

One of the magnificent creatures at the Tiger show

Vanessa

Brilliant Weblog Award!!!

2008-08-25T07:00:00.001-06:00

I have been awarded the Brilliant Weblog Award. Me , crazy huh. I haven't really been blogging for long and most times worry about what I put on my post's. I really don't know what to say when Kathy gave me this award. Would thanks suffice?? Hardly but until i come up with something better thank you from the bottom of my heart. Kathy put's amazing stuff on her blog, she recently moved to typad and is in transition but the stuff she comes up with is just fabulous.

Now it's on to the hard stuff. Choosing 7 blogs to get this Award. This is difficult at best as there are so many wonderful blogs out there, but here goes nothing.

Mrs. Darling of course-

This woman has an ability to wirte amazing posts about ordinary life. I have been reading her blog for some time and am completly hooked. I need a meeting or something to get help, lol. Really truly she is the 1st blog I read just about anytime I go blog hunting.

Randi-

I have just started reading this blog but I just love it. There are cute little crafty things she does and she shares great pictures of her family that makes you feel like you are there enjoying it all. Randi also shares neat recipe's , frugal things . She is a woman after my own heart.

Shari-

The amazing hs'ing ideas that are here are worth coming back to again and again. There are reviews of products that are very helpful and around the home stuff that is also very helpful. It's a great stop to see if there is anything you may want to add to your hs.

Angela-

This is such a great blog to look at it is sooo preety and fun. Angela also shares great reivews on products, great pictures, fun family insights and more. Beyond that Angela shares some neat pictures and family ancedotes.

Damama

Well this blog just cracks me up. It's a life in general blog and when I need a good laugh I check to see what Damama has come up with. Check out her Aug 7th and 4th posts I got 21 kids and laughed at the muppets for some time.

Kim

Kim is great and puts alot of wonderful links and stuff on her blog. She does her hs similar to mine with lots of lapbooks and unit studies with various other things to add to it. She also likes to read the same book seiries I do. It's fun to see what she has going on.

Learning by Living

Another neat hs blog with lapbooks. She recently shared great organizing ideas and pictures and to do lists to go with it. A lady after my own heart.

For the nominees here are the rules:

1) Add the logo of the award to your blog

2) Add a link to the person who awarded it to you

3) Nominate at least 7 other blogs

4) Add links to those blogs on your blog

5) Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs

So there are my fav's. I hope to see some more of yours too. It was a hard decision and I really wanted to add a frugal blog and a scrapbooking blog but then again mabey I will just post about them some other time.

Vanessa

I'm Sexy!!!

2008-08-20T10:08:00.003-06:00

Austin took a shower and I commented his hair was getting long. He has these cute curls and I said something here is how it went.

Me: Look Austin has curls

Austin: I know their sexy!!

Me: (laughing) Hmmmm?!?

Vanessa

Learning by Osmosis

2008-08-20T08:25:00.006-06:00

This morning I woke up and came into my living room and Conner was asleep on the floor with a book. I know I tucked him into his bed the night before but appearently he woke up and came up to read but was more tired then he thought.

How on earth did he fall asleep like this?

He looks like he is studying.

Just plain cute

NO moment in Conner's life would be complete without his Cat.

Vanessa

Park day fun

2008-08-19T08:08:00.001-06:00

On one of the last remaining park days I brought my camera in high hopes and was not disapointed. The boys played, we had a picnic lunch and the mom's had a great time chatting. It is really nice to be among so many nice moms with similar ideas. The icing on the cake here is that there seem to be many boys the same ages as my boys which is just fantastic since I have had he hardest time finding that for my boys.

Conner has homemade lunchables with his favorite mustard. German hot mustart that is quite spicey and clear's up sinuses, really it does. Conner even said so.
Colin, Conner, Austin and Kathy. Thanks Kathy for sharing your blanket among many other things.
Alot of the kids play on this playground.
Colin is up in this tree practically at the top.
See him, I made him get down as other kids were wanting to go up and I needed him to set a good example.
A toad the boys found. I think he is adorable but I am kooky that way.

The boys thought is was funny to put the little guy on their dogs head. I thought it was a great picture although moments before I said they should leave the poor thing alone. Hmmm I have many double standards.

The dog was really good about it although he did chase the toad around the grass for as long as the boys let him. I'm sure he loved his new toy???

Vanessa

1st Day of School -our way

2008-08-16T08:09:00.010-06:00

Our 1st yr of hs we went on a field trip the first day to the botanical gardens in Denver. We had a great time and it was fun, so it became a tradition. This yr we went to Castle Rock to go Rock hounding near Devil's head. After going all over the mountain on rocky terrain my GPS found Devil's head. Thank goodness too because the directions in the rock hounding book weren't all that great. The dig site was just a mile from this point but we wanted to see what Devil's head was all about first. It said it was only a 1.4 ml hike there I thought no problem. What was I thinking.

Conner's non appropriate clothing and shoes. He had a good time anyway

The hike was great but it was misting and Conner was not dressed appropriately for the weather or the hike. I make a habit of having the kids in charge of their own clothes and if they dress inappropriately the hope is that they learn from this and pay attention to the activity and weather. Obviously I need to take over on this as my boys are still on occasion not paying attention. Anyway. The hike was great. How I missed being on a hike since we really haven't gone on a good hike since moving here over a yr ago, how sad.

We made it all the way to the top of Devils head the only problem is that all that fog was not letting us see the site properly although it was neat to see it that way all on it's own too, know what I mean. There were several clearing's between trees where I thought if it weren't for the fog this would be a amazing overlook not to mention picture. But the fog gave it it's own mystical quality that was interesting, but I still wanted to see all of Castle Rock below me. Wouldn't that have turned out great?

You can click on these resources here. The first is the gov't ran site telling a little about Devil's head and the second is some great pictures taken by some guy that went there. The pictures are great and now I want to go back on a clear day.

http://gorp.away.com/gorp/resource/us_national_forest/co/hik_pi3.htm
http://www.stevegarufi.com/devilshead.htm

My boys just a bit after the start of the trail at a bridge, Conner is a troll hmmm I saw that in a cartoon sometime didn't I?Great rock formations

Isn't this cool? There were several rocks that had this sort of cut out portion where water collected.
We found Raspberry bushes, my boys favorite snack on a hike is wild grown raspberries.
Colin looks through to see if he can find some ripe ones, most were not ready!
Here is what we found, yummmo!!!!!
Another bush,more raspberry hunting. Once he started I couldn't drag him away

On the trail.
Austin inspects a rock formation
Conner does the Crane impression. LOL!!!
Colin found this plant interesting and was so cute about showing it to us. He talked about it in art language that he loves to use and still impresses me.
A pine cone as big as your head is worth a picture

You can see all the mist in all the pictures, it was quite brisk

We thought this was devil's Head, turned out to be the halfway point.
Reading an interpretive sign about the woman who found this site to look for fire's
My cute boys on a rock that looks "like a lounge or couch mom"

Austin found a little cave there.
Can you see it?

The fire lookout post on top of the mountain at the end of the trail.
Stairs you must take to get to the lookout.
As you know I'm a huge fan of signage.
Her is the story of the lady and the start of the fire lookout post.

What a great day, minus the weather. We stopped at the Castle Rock outlet's because Colin really had been wanting a garlic press. Honest I'm not even sure I have any recipe's that I can use the thing but he saw the chef's on Food Network use it all the time so we apparently had an unfit kitchen without it. We were also hungry so we stopped at Red Robin to eat and I found out they got rid of my favorite hamburger (pot roast burger), I was so bummed. Colin loooovvveed his Salmon burger and talked like a chef "The dressing and the grilled salmon make a good combination, the flavors blend so great". HUH???? Where does he come up with this stuff? Oh yeah food network. Austin had an egg on his but it was good and I had these cool garlic fries that we thought we could make at home, everyone loved them. Finally Conner loved our nacho appetizer so much he joined the cooking competition we are going to have by making them.

I think this is a great way to start our school yr. It is so much more fun then separating out supplies like ps. So we are going to start and end the school yr on this note, Field trip time!!!

Vanessa

Conner's Cake

2008-08-13T19:51:00.006-06:00

I meant to post the pictures of Conner's cake and presents and well got busy planning the school yr. But I finally got all the pictures on my computer. We are still going to take him golfing as part of his present so that will be there too

Here is the cake I made. It was a ice cream cake the recipe was Baked Alaska. I didn't know that was an ice cream cake.

I am sort of proud of the way it turned out.

Conner, Derek(Austin's friend) and Austin getting ready for cake.

Conner with his cake before cutting.

Conner gets a slice and so does everyone. Happy Birthday Conner!!!

There is a layer of coffee, vanilla and then coffee again. With a meringue topping and a brownie crust. How yummy is that. No wonder Conner picked it as his birthday cake.

Vanessa

Going Banana's

2008-08-13T12:28:00.005-06:00

When I was growing up I spent half my life at my best friends house. Her mom was really cool and made the most amazing Banana bread. I never got her recipe but adopted a recipe out of the Betty Crocker Cookbook. I can now offically call it my own recipe since I have altered it a bit, does one item count???My boys are huge fans of this bread and whenever I have made it for parties and gatherings it is a big hit with kids as well as adults. So this is my version of an old favorite from when I was growing up mixed with good ole Betty's recipe.

Chocolate Banana Bread

1 c. sugar

1/3 c. margarine or butter, softened

2 eggs

1 1/2 c. mashed ripe bananas (3 to 4 medium)

1/3 c. water

1 2/3 c. all-purpose flour

1 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. baking powder

1/2 c. milk chocolate chips

Heat oven to 350. Grease bottom only of loaf pan. Mix sugar and butter, I use my Kitchen Aid. Add next 3 ingredients. Then Stir in the remaining ingredients. Bake for 55-60 min. Cool completly before serving.

I acutally don't because my kids are impatient when it comes to baked goods and we have found that when it is still warm it is quite delisious.

All I changed was instead of nuts I put chocolate chips in. My boys prefer milk chocolate but I love dark chocolate and it gives it a wonderful rich flavor. I had several very ripe, overripe bananas that needed using so this morning we went ahead and made two loaves. In our first batch we used baking m&m's and in the second we put milk chocolate chips and toffee chips.

The banana bread with baking m&m's

Close up, you can see the colors ran a bit so the loaf is quite colorful. The boys loved it.

Banana chocolate toffee bread. You get the ooey gooey goodness of the milk chocolate chips with the crunch of the toffee bits. All the flavors go really well together, I'm quite proud.

Up close

I then saw that I had some coconut and was very tempted to throw that in as well but decided to make it in another loaf when I have more banana's and instead of the water put pineapple juice. Doesn't that sound great I could name it Hawaiian Bannana Bread or something. This actually gives me alot of ideas to tinker with the recipe some more in the future, although it needs to stay Banana Bread.

This was taken after the bread barley cooled enough to be taken out of the pan to be put on the cooling rack. I warned him it would be hot but Austin couldn't wait another second and had to have a slice. He bit down and his eyes grew big, then he dropped the bite and sucked some air in to cool his burning mounth. Do you think he learned his lesson?? No way this isn't the first time he has done this, I'm still waiting for him to get it. Although it is sweet he likes my baking.

Vanessa

Tuesday Review

2008-08-12T15:38:00.004-06:00

It's that time to review that something great that makes your hs work better. You can participate with angela here-http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/byourlove1.Here is mine.

How do you keep track of all the things you do with your homeschool? I use Homeschool Tracker Plus. I used to have the Basic version, which is free -http://www.homeschooltracker.com/, and I used it for a year. I then met a few great ladies that used the plus version and sold me on it. The plus version has lesson plans section and a few other things in it that the basic version does not. What I love about this program is that you don't need those consumable paper planners to write it all down. You could just keep track of it all right there. You choose and set up your own school yr.

What you have are the Main Menu, student, teacher, maintenance and reports. The main menu really just gives a at-a-glance view of your students days and time( you can choose not to keep time). The student has agenda, assignments, attendance, field trips, journal, memorization, overview and a reading log. The teacher section covers goals (set your own), journal, lesson plans, lesson plans schedule and a weekly planner. Maintenance covers all administration areas such as grades, resources, school info, students, subjects/courses and years/terms. Reports are just an area where you can print it all up in style.

The things I like about this program is I can put it all in there including our field trips and hours and reading. It really works for me and come high school I have a way to print out transcripts for my children. I can keep a journal too so If I don't have time to sort through some ideas I just put them there and sort them out later to make sense for homeschooling. It can drive you a bit nuts at times though if you get to worried about time spent and all like i did for a while. My kids have yet to use the agenda and such but I am working on that this yr. They also haven't used the journal portion and I will probably not make them, but I suppose it could be useful. The really great thing is having all my resources in one place and the books we have read there too. The list of books got quite long after just a short while so I really felt like we were doing alot and that was reassuring to me.

I liked the basic edition as well and it worked just fine so you can try that first before splurging on the plus edition. I would suggest this to anyone looking for something to keep all their homeschooling information.

Vanessa

2008-08-10T08:41:00.003-06:00

Look what my friend Kathy shared?? I don't know how she finds this stuff but its great. What this guy does is amazing. The boys and I looked at his paintings for a long while. She's on the blogroll on the sidebar, it is what it is.

One of these days I'll figure out how to make names linkable.

Here is the link to the site to check out some of the amazing paintings this guy has done.

http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/pave.htm

How did this happen?

2008-08-06T08:20:00.005-06:00

Conner about a yr old. Isn't he the cutest?

It's official I am the mom of three pre-teen boys. Until December when my oldest actually turns 13 and will be a teenager. How did this happen? I feel like I blinked and the time just went through my fingers like water. I can't wait to see what the next yrs bring but loath the day that they will no longer be my babies but out there in the world on their own, I wish them the best. Ok enough melodramatics and all about me syndrome.

My baby boy turned 10 today, 3:30 in the morning to be precise.

Happy Birthday Conner

Conner and a baby chicken

Yes aother with his chicken

Conner nervously on a plane, the first he remember. A small one at that. He did well and they flew over our house.

Conner with his Best Friend

At the sand dunes my sweet little boy comes back for me. Sigh!

Conner and yes turtle again. they take very good pictures don't you think.

Igniting a passion for learning

2008-08-05T21:32:00.003-06:00

In our journey of hs I have come upon a wonderful concept. Igniting within our children a love of learning. I have read cute sayings about teaching a child to fish and it related back to learning, I thought it was so cute. Now the question is how does one do this with their child? Is there some sort of secret to it.
It has come to my attention that my eldest son lost alot of his love of learning in the past school yr and if I want him to continue on this course then I should let him have his way and send him back to ps. I want what every parent wants the best for my child and if that is not being hs'ed then so be it. But the opportunity to re-ignite that little fire to search out the answers to the ever demanding questions is what I hope to capture in not just Austin but my other children as well.
What are your ideas or experiences for giving your child that love of learning? Please share at will. I will try to share some of your answers.

Here is a little something I found on the subject.
http://www.wikihow.com/Encourage-Your-Child-to-Love-Learning

Vanessa

Multiplication help

2008-08-04T19:34:00.003-06:00

This past weekend a girlfriend and I went hs shopping. We had a great time. During this time we discussed many things among them was Times Tales. If you haven't heard of times tales you are missing out. This program is so neat and had my kids knowing their upper multiplication facts in an afternoon. Although I think we may need to review this program it was well worth the effort and time and very inexpensive to boot.

I love things like this that aren't texbookey. Where your children learn despite what everyone says. It's amazing the amount of time we spent on our multiplication facts between our textbook, reviewing them and worksheets and online games. Out of all of that this worked. I was skeptical at first. But it worked. One afternoon versus hours and hours of time. Yet quantity is not what worked here it was definitely quality. If I could do my whole school like this I would.

The idea is you read a series of stories based on the number 6-9. Then there are cartoon like picture stories that ask questions and there is also a worksheet your kids can do to have it stick. My kids enjoyed this and I think that is why it stuck.

Here is a link . If you want to purchase it it costs about $20.00.
http://www.triggermemorysystem.com/Deluxe.html

Vanessa

What a neat site

2008-08-03T11:32:00.002-06:00

I just came accross this as I am in the midst of attemptin worm composting. It is such a cute site and so relevent for me and my children. If you plan on doing any enviormental studies this site has alot of information and it's all for kids.

http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/caer/ce/eek/index.htm

Vanessa

The last Lecture

2008-08-02T16:45:00.003-06:00

If you havent heard or clicked on the hyperlink on the sidebar do so, now. I just found out this inperational man passed away on the 25th this month. My heart goes out to his wife and children. He made an impact on me and countless others. Go get the book it was great .

Vanessa