Keeping it interesting

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

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

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

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

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

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

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