Today I want to do a post about "Thankful Thursdays". This week I want to discuss 5 things I am thankful for.
1) My husband and children: I have been truly blessed since my husband came into my life. He is my best friend and the love of my life. He is a wonderful head of our house. He is a spiritual leader for us. He is strong and consistent in his faith. Our children are also such a blessing. They bring such joy and excitement to our lives. My sons have taken us on quite the adventure. And our daughter just adds to that adventure in only the way a baby sister can. There is never a dull moment in our home
2) My Faith: I am thankful to know that I have a personal Lord and Savior. I am glad to know that He died on the cross for our sins.
3) Homeschooling: I am thankful I am able to homeschool our children. The relationships between my children and us as well as between them is fantastic to watch. It is nice having them around the house and getting to actively participate in their learning instead of simply battling to get homework completed.
4) I am thankful for our friends: Even though we have moved twice in the past 6 years, we have made some really good friends (some of whom I consider to be family.
5) I am thankful that our family has spent almost the past six years living places that have 4 seasons. It can be so peaceful to watch the snow fall on a quiet evening surrounded by our family. Then in the spring, everything comes to life and becomes green. That is followed by summer - even though there may be hot days, there are also cooler days mixed in as well. Finally in fall the see the trees change to all different magnificent colors is such a wonderful experience.
So what are you thankful for today?
Showing posts with label husband. Show all posts
Showing posts with label husband. Show all posts
Thursday, October 30, 2014
Friday, October 17, 2014
Planners, Planners, Planners oh my!
I admit it. I love planners, stationary, school supplies and all things associated with them. Ever since I began college, I have used some type of planner. Typically I just got a cheap one - either from Wal-Mart, Target, a bookstore or such. Then I was introduced to MomAgenda. While I liked the format and idea of the planner, the hardcover didn't lay flat enough for me or seem to want to stay open.
So I began using Day-runners, Day-timers and Franklin Covey binder types that I got at local stores. These just didn't seem to fit our family needs. After all I am the official "Keeper of the Calendar". As I tell my children - if it is not on my calendar, it will not happen. This way they make sure to tell me every time they want to do something. Plus when they ask, I can easily check to see if there is already something going on.
I am part of an Online Bible Study community by Proverbs 31 Ministries. Before our most recent study began, we got into a discussion about planners. Two different ones were mentioned: The Erin Condren Life Planner and the Plum Paper planner. I had to immediately attempt to find out all I could about these two planners. I joined some Facebook groups to see what I could find out. I also studied their webpages for information.
In my family there are 7 individuals: my husband (with his Army schedule and such), myself (and all my Army and Church commitments), our three sons (ages 18, almost 16 and almost 14) and our daughter who just turned 12. Plus my mother lives in our home. So there is a lot of to keep up with.
so I want a planner that can handle all of that. Plus I want it to help with my "to-do lists", errands we need to complete, and so forth. It needs to have space to write in and places for me to make notes.
As I entered into this process, I assumed that a planner was meant for just that: writing down plans, events, shopping lists and other such things. I never realized it was an artistic and creative outlet.
Planners these days get personalized in all kinds of way. Some use washi tape to add color, texture and dimension to their planners. Stickers add a wonderful touch. Many use scrapbooking ideas to give their planner that just so touch.
Having the correct type of pen is an absolute must. After all no one wants to have their pens bleed through other pages. Also, there is a need for post-it notes, something called a dashboard, and more. There is a whole wonderful world of opportunity to make these planners an amazing creative expression of who someone is; whom or what they love; and what is important to them. It is completely phenomenal to me.
So in the coming weeks, I will be sharing more with you about: which one I decided on; how I am using it, and how I am decorating it. #blogboost
So I began using Day-runners, Day-timers and Franklin Covey binder types that I got at local stores. These just didn't seem to fit our family needs. After all I am the official "Keeper of the Calendar". As I tell my children - if it is not on my calendar, it will not happen. This way they make sure to tell me every time they want to do something. Plus when they ask, I can easily check to see if there is already something going on.
I am part of an Online Bible Study community by Proverbs 31 Ministries. Before our most recent study began, we got into a discussion about planners. Two different ones were mentioned: The Erin Condren Life Planner and the Plum Paper planner. I had to immediately attempt to find out all I could about these two planners. I joined some Facebook groups to see what I could find out. I also studied their webpages for information.
In my family there are 7 individuals: my husband (with his Army schedule and such), myself (and all my Army and Church commitments), our three sons (ages 18, almost 16 and almost 14) and our daughter who just turned 12. Plus my mother lives in our home. So there is a lot of to keep up with.
so I want a planner that can handle all of that. Plus I want it to help with my "to-do lists", errands we need to complete, and so forth. It needs to have space to write in and places for me to make notes.
As I entered into this process, I assumed that a planner was meant for just that: writing down plans, events, shopping lists and other such things. I never realized it was an artistic and creative outlet.
Planners these days get personalized in all kinds of way. Some use washi tape to add color, texture and dimension to their planners. Stickers add a wonderful touch. Many use scrapbooking ideas to give their planner that just so touch.
Having the correct type of pen is an absolute must. After all no one wants to have their pens bleed through other pages. Also, there is a need for post-it notes, something called a dashboard, and more. There is a whole wonderful world of opportunity to make these planners an amazing creative expression of who someone is; whom or what they love; and what is important to them. It is completely phenomenal to me.
So in the coming weeks, I will be sharing more with you about: which one I decided on; how I am using it, and how I am decorating it. #blogboost
Monday, October 13, 2014
Cleaning and Organizing After Moving
One of the fun things about moving is getting to organize everything. Also, it is an opportunity to clean everything and figure out what to keep and what to get rid of. So back during the summer, we moved into our current home. Now this was a local move for us. We moved from one house to another about 10 miles away. Due to circumstances, it has taken us a while to get around to working on unpacking and organizing everything.
With my husband being military, he gets all the federal holidays off. So he has off today for Columbus Day. We are taking advantage of the day off to work on unpacking and organizing. As a homeschooling family, we have a lot of books (and I do mean a lot). Which means we have to have lots of shelves to put them on. So we are working to get them straightened up. As our children grow up. some books just need to pass from our hands into other hands. As much as I would love to be able to keep all the books we have, it is not practical. So we are in a season of passing things on to others. My daughter is now considered middle school/junior high, so the elementary books need to go. How about you, do you have things that you need to either clean, organize or perhaps purge? If so, I would love to hear from you. #blogboost
With my husband being military, he gets all the federal holidays off. So he has off today for Columbus Day. We are taking advantage of the day off to work on unpacking and organizing. As a homeschooling family, we have a lot of books (and I do mean a lot). Which means we have to have lots of shelves to put them on. So we are working to get them straightened up. As our children grow up. some books just need to pass from our hands into other hands. As much as I would love to be able to keep all the books we have, it is not practical. So we are in a season of passing things on to others. My daughter is now considered middle school/junior high, so the elementary books need to go. How about you, do you have things that you need to either clean, organize or perhaps purge? If so, I would love to hear from you. #blogboost
Monday, October 6, 2014
How I Choose Our Homeschool Curriculum - Part 2
So we are back for day 6 of the Ultimate Blog challenge and day 2 of my discussion about how I choose our homeschool curriculum.
If you read the blog yesterday, these were the last things I had to say:
"We have the lists of what we need, so we know what we are looking for and possibly what vendors will have those items. Then we go back to our hotel room that evening and have a frank discussion of what we saw."
We discuss the merits of the choices. We look at any literature we may have collected from the vendors. Sometimes we look online at the vendor's website or possibly Cathy Duffy's site to confirm our thoughts about the curriculum. Then we start making new lists. This time we typically pick 3 to 5 choices per subject that we want to investigate further. We have a good idea of what will work for our family. Day 2 of the convention is spent examining in depth curriculum. This is where things get really serious. If a vendor does not have time or interest in talking to us, most likely we will eliminate that selection. I understand that vendors are busy and we go to conventions that have a ton of people. But if I stand in a booth watching new people walk in and be helped, it turns me off to that vendor.
Of course, if the vendor acknowledges me and indicates they will be with me when they finish with the current customer, I can understand that and will wait patiently. So typically on day 2, my husband and I spend time looking and comparing together. Other parts of the day, he has a list of items he is responsible for looking at while I have my list of items. This is where we break our initial lists down further. We look at the materials closely and with our children and our lifestyle in mind. then that night we go back to our hotel room and again evaluate what we saw and learned that day. Sometimes, we bring a child or some of the children into the discussion since our children are older. It helps to have their opinions occasionally. Other times, we just make executive decisions. Finally day 3 comes around (if there are 3 days in the convention) and purchases have to be made. If there are only 2 days for the convention (like the one for CHAP in Pennsylvania), then day 2 changes to the day purchases are made. Usually by the time the CHAP convention rolls around we have already attended at least one other convention, so we have already looked at a lot of the material and are really just trying to fill in gaps.
Day 3 we have carts and items to place materials in. This is also the day that everyone is called to action. If we have a lot of material to buy, my husband and I may split the list and make purchases accordingly. Other times, we find it faster to stay together - that way we can make runs to the van or hotel room if necessary to unload things. With 4 children we can acquire quite a bit. Plus we usually end up adding in some extra items for my husband's Ministry collection or for my personal library.
I love when I can purchase books or materials and actually bring them home with me. However, that doesn't always happen. Sometime we have to order the materials and wait for them to arrive. But when the boxes start being delivered, it is a fantastic day. I hope you enjoyed reading a little about how we pick our homeschool curriculum.
We begin
If you read the blog yesterday, these were the last things I had to say:
"We have the lists of what we need, so we know what we are looking for and possibly what vendors will have those items. Then we go back to our hotel room that evening and have a frank discussion of what we saw."
We discuss the merits of the choices. We look at any literature we may have collected from the vendors. Sometimes we look online at the vendor's website or possibly Cathy Duffy's site to confirm our thoughts about the curriculum. Then we start making new lists. This time we typically pick 3 to 5 choices per subject that we want to investigate further. We have a good idea of what will work for our family. Day 2 of the convention is spent examining in depth curriculum. This is where things get really serious. If a vendor does not have time or interest in talking to us, most likely we will eliminate that selection. I understand that vendors are busy and we go to conventions that have a ton of people. But if I stand in a booth watching new people walk in and be helped, it turns me off to that vendor.
Of course, if the vendor acknowledges me and indicates they will be with me when they finish with the current customer, I can understand that and will wait patiently. So typically on day 2, my husband and I spend time looking and comparing together. Other parts of the day, he has a list of items he is responsible for looking at while I have my list of items. This is where we break our initial lists down further. We look at the materials closely and with our children and our lifestyle in mind. then that night we go back to our hotel room and again evaluate what we saw and learned that day. Sometimes, we bring a child or some of the children into the discussion since our children are older. It helps to have their opinions occasionally. Other times, we just make executive decisions. Finally day 3 comes around (if there are 3 days in the convention) and purchases have to be made. If there are only 2 days for the convention (like the one for CHAP in Pennsylvania), then day 2 changes to the day purchases are made. Usually by the time the CHAP convention rolls around we have already attended at least one other convention, so we have already looked at a lot of the material and are really just trying to fill in gaps.
Day 3 we have carts and items to place materials in. This is also the day that everyone is called to action. If we have a lot of material to buy, my husband and I may split the list and make purchases accordingly. Other times, we find it faster to stay together - that way we can make runs to the van or hotel room if necessary to unload things. With 4 children we can acquire quite a bit. Plus we usually end up adding in some extra items for my husband's Ministry collection or for my personal library.
I love when I can purchase books or materials and actually bring them home with me. However, that doesn't always happen. Sometime we have to order the materials and wait for them to arrive. But when the boxes start being delivered, it is a fantastic day. I hope you enjoyed reading a little about how we pick our homeschool curriculum.
We begin
Saturday, October 4, 2014
How we entered the world of Homeschooling
So as I said before, I was going to share how we got into the world of homeschooling. Once again, God has a sense of humor. You see my husband, prior to us beginning homeschooling, was totally against the idea. He felt like children needed to be in classrooms in public schools. I often hear people express that same opinion. Moreover, I hear people say that children can become socialized while being homeschooled. But I beg to differ. I caution people to never say, "I could/would not ever do something/" Because immediately that sets someone up to have to have their words thrown back in their face.
Our son went to two different public schools for grades kindergarten thru 5th. The first one he attended kindergarten through 2nd. Then we moved from one home to a home on a military installation. So he did 3rd and 4th there and began 5th. However, he was placed in a classroom with a teacher that was completely the wrong person to be teaching him. Because it was a small school on an air station., we did not have a lot of options. This teacher made it impossible for us to leave him in the school. The school had a full-time nurse who was at the school full-time. On the morning in question, she was there. My son had health issues that it would take us until 2013 to get diagnosed (took that long for symptoms to get bad enough for us to want to put our son through endoscopies). We knew he had heath concerns and this particular day, I knew he did not feel good. But I asked him to try to hold out until lunch. However, the teacher took it upon herself to determine that my son was faking as a result of forgetting to bring the spelling words he was forced to select on the second week of school instead of the teacher providing the list of words to the students. She ended up yelling at me, not a good start for a conversation about my son. She told me I could do what I wanted to with my son - so I took him home. I knew my son was sick so what other choice would I make.
Based on the conversation with the teacher, I went home with my son and called my husband. I said something needed to change. Our other 3 children all attended this school and had wonderful teachers, wonderful classrooms and had all their needs being met. We had three choices - change all the children to a different school, change just Jacob to a different school (which didn't work because we would have to provide transportation and I could not be two places at one time). Or we could just homeschool our oldest. Mentally I had gone through all the possible decisions and investigated homeschooling before I talked to my husband. I knew I was up for the challenge - after all I had been a teacher in a classroom and taken the teacher certification courses. So that part didn't scare me. So I went into the conversation knowing what my decision was going to be. Surprisingly enough he agreed with my choice. Of course we had family members who were skeptical. But in the long run, the majority came around. Less than a month after bringing our son home we saw tremendous changes for the good in him. He started to enjoy being around his family. He started to do better with his schoolwork. Within that first year, my husband became a really staunch advocate of homeschooling.
We became part of a homeschool group, so that plus scouts gave him opportunities to be with others his own age. The next year we brought all the children home and I have to say it has been a tremendous blessing for our family.
Our son went to two different public schools for grades kindergarten thru 5th. The first one he attended kindergarten through 2nd. Then we moved from one home to a home on a military installation. So he did 3rd and 4th there and began 5th. However, he was placed in a classroom with a teacher that was completely the wrong person to be teaching him. Because it was a small school on an air station., we did not have a lot of options. This teacher made it impossible for us to leave him in the school. The school had a full-time nurse who was at the school full-time. On the morning in question, she was there. My son had health issues that it would take us until 2013 to get diagnosed (took that long for symptoms to get bad enough for us to want to put our son through endoscopies). We knew he had heath concerns and this particular day, I knew he did not feel good. But I asked him to try to hold out until lunch. However, the teacher took it upon herself to determine that my son was faking as a result of forgetting to bring the spelling words he was forced to select on the second week of school instead of the teacher providing the list of words to the students. She ended up yelling at me, not a good start for a conversation about my son. She told me I could do what I wanted to with my son - so I took him home. I knew my son was sick so what other choice would I make.
Based on the conversation with the teacher, I went home with my son and called my husband. I said something needed to change. Our other 3 children all attended this school and had wonderful teachers, wonderful classrooms and had all their needs being met. We had three choices - change all the children to a different school, change just Jacob to a different school (which didn't work because we would have to provide transportation and I could not be two places at one time). Or we could just homeschool our oldest. Mentally I had gone through all the possible decisions and investigated homeschooling before I talked to my husband. I knew I was up for the challenge - after all I had been a teacher in a classroom and taken the teacher certification courses. So that part didn't scare me. So I went into the conversation knowing what my decision was going to be. Surprisingly enough he agreed with my choice. Of course we had family members who were skeptical. But in the long run, the majority came around. Less than a month after bringing our son home we saw tremendous changes for the good in him. He started to enjoy being around his family. He started to do better with his schoolwork. Within that first year, my husband became a really staunch advocate of homeschooling.
We became part of a homeschool group, so that plus scouts gave him opportunities to be with others his own age. The next year we brought all the children home and I have to say it has been a tremendous blessing for our family.
Wednesday, October 1, 2014
Life, Moving and Homeschooling
So like most years, we started our homeschool year back in the middle of July. We had stopped a little bit earlier than normal because we moved from one house to another. This meant all of our homeschool materials had to be packed up. So the idea was for the most important items to be placed either in the rooms where needed them; where we wanted them or where they could most easily be accessed. Also all boxes were to be clearly labeled with what was inside and who the items belonged to or what rooms the items belonged to - i.e. kitchen, oldest son, daughter, my mom and so forth. However this did not happen with us having our 3 teenage sons, one pre-teen daughter and some of children's friends.
Don't get me wrong, they packed really well. However, they failed miserably at labeling. So now we are a couple of months into our school year, and many items I need are missing - meaning buried beyond a mountain of stuff or otherwise hidden.
Also the moment I say, "Where is such and such - I know person A packed it". I get the answer of, "I didn't pack that and I have no clue where it might be."
Now top that off with a husband in the military and things get more interesting. He has had two trips to take to other states. Both of them allowed me the opportunity to go with him since he was authorized to drive. So that meant 6 days we were going to be out of the house.
I don't know if you homeschool or not, or even have children - but the combination of the cat being away (me - the enforcer of all rules and grandmother in the house since my mom lives with us) means the mice will really play. The mice playing interferes with schoolwork getting done. So I need to make a plan to get everyone caught up, on schedule, and on pace. Stay tuned for our continuing saga.
Don't get me wrong, they packed really well. However, they failed miserably at labeling. So now we are a couple of months into our school year, and many items I need are missing - meaning buried beyond a mountain of stuff or otherwise hidden.
Also the moment I say, "Where is such and such - I know person A packed it". I get the answer of, "I didn't pack that and I have no clue where it might be."
Now top that off with a husband in the military and things get more interesting. He has had two trips to take to other states. Both of them allowed me the opportunity to go with him since he was authorized to drive. So that meant 6 days we were going to be out of the house.
I don't know if you homeschool or not, or even have children - but the combination of the cat being away (me - the enforcer of all rules and grandmother in the house since my mom lives with us) means the mice will really play. The mice playing interferes with schoolwork getting done. So I need to make a plan to get everyone caught up, on schedule, and on pace. Stay tuned for our continuing saga.
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