Still here...

AAAhHH! Yes, I'm alive...
Mom came in the week before Thanksgiving and we have been busy with all the preparations for turkey day. 3 days of cooking and Black Friday shopping and Christmas decorating.
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. I did, but now I have some reality to deal with. Amber's birthday. Her 11th birthday. Does anyone else have a hard time dealing with birthdays??? I can't believe that 11 years ago right now I was miserably pregnant with my girl. She got up from bed a little while ago to tell me that her and her sister were still awake because they digested too much glucose... nuts.
When do they do that?? Grow up I mean. It's like one day you're changing diapers and the next day they know physics. Sigh...
So this will wrap up our birthday run for the year and I have 8 months before I go through this all again. I hope you all have a wonderful rest of the week. My mom has 1 more week here so I won't have time to blog again for a while. I will try and get a few more in before Christmas.
Blessings :)

This and That

I still haven't taken any pics of our projects yet...I know, I know. But I did have a wonderful week. We didn't have a lot of activities this week. Noah didn't have speech Thursday either (teacher workshop or something) so that was an unexpected surprise too. He only has 2 more sessions and then we're done for the quarter. That usually gives us about 2-3 weeks off for testing and rescheduling.
It was a great school week this week. The girls FINALLY got caught up on their Latin. We have been reviewing since school started. And when I say we I mean WE. I totally forgot how to conjugate verbs and decline nouns. How many endings should a noun have?? Really. Feminine, masculine, Neuter...ahhh!
Also, the girls were featured on the Charity:Water blog http://www.charitywater.org/blog/category/updates/campaigns-to-watch/ if you'd like to check it out. The girls were very excited to do the interview. I hadn't checked the website until tonight to see if it was published though. They will like reading it. They took out everything we put in about Jesus though. I was pretty upset. We know why we did it.

Matthew 25:34-36

³⁴ “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. ³⁵ For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, ³⁶ I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

I better get going. I will take pictures soon of the science and history stuff we have been doing and I know I still have our new poetry posting to do. I'll get to it as soon as I can.

Terrible......4's???

Why is it that people call them terrible twos? I never had a terrible two. Ever. Not that I even consider my kids "terrible" at all. At least not in their entirety. Maybe in a certain moment I could consider their actions Terrible.
Take today for instance. I could call today an instance of terrbility. Ya, it's a word...now. In my world it is. Why you ask??? (if you didn't too bad. I'm answering why anyway.) Well, maybe because I had to spend about 15 minutes sitting with (on) Nathanael while my kids recited their poems and sang our folk song at Poetry today while he cried to run around yelling with his friend. Ya. Bad Momma. I know. I took away playing on the playground while all the other kids played. And he is now taking a nap every.single.day. And I may have taken away his next 3 birthdays. It's all a blur.
I remember Noah's first temper tantrum was at 4 too. It was during a field trip to an old school house. He never had any attitude problems until that day. It was amazing.
Nate never gives me a hard time here. Almost never. But when we have poetry or small groups on Sunday night it seems like it's his time to go all out. Hmm. Let's see how livid I can make mommy. Well, if that is his goal he really succeeds. 10 fold. I think my blood pressure was 289/217. Really.
On a more positive note, my little man Noah turned 7 yesterday!! He is growing up so much. He had 2 milestones in one day...he passed his test for his gold belt yesterday too!! In two months he passed 2 martial arts tests and has his second belt. Well, I had a long day: Cleaned out the boys room and closet, school, speech, consigned clothes, poetry in the park, home dinner, laundry, dishes. BED. Goodnight :)

I know, I know. Ok so Amber's tooth is great. They bonded it and you can't even tell it was broken! Amazing :)
Our new puppy is doing great. The kids love her so much. She's a sweetie.
School has been going well. The kids are adjusting to the new schedule well. We haven't had to make any big adjustments to the day yet. Nate is enjoying what he's been doing too, so that's been helpful. It's a big change from last year. And the year before. Where he would sit in the middle of the school table and hold my face while I was trying to give a history lesson. Fun. I made it through two years of toddler mayhem to make it here...and I like it a lot.
Noah started back to speech and enjoys it. We sit in the library again this year and do some school work. The kids still are afraid of the librarian (so am I honestly). They were impressed by the substitute last week. They said she didn't seem as mean. I guess that's a positive thing.
Poetry in the park was also great this week. It was our first week back and we switched the schedule, where we meet, and how we do it. It went pretty smoothly and we all had a great time. I will do a post on exactly what we changed soon. I've just had a lot going on this week. I will also be posting pictures of our fair projects next week. So, gotta go get ready for the DMV. yay.
Blessings!

life's going ons

Just wanted to let you all know I am not dead. I have been super busy and it doesn't look like I'll be having any spare time in the next few days. amber chipped her front tooth, permanent tooth, a nice chunk is missing. I will probably be spending part of a day in the dentist this week, I have to do groceries, renew my license, we have poetry in the park, and 4 nights of martial arts. That's what I remember. Don't forget, I'm supposed to school sometime in there too. So pray for Amber that her tooth is still good, and it doesn't need to be pulled out. Hopefully they can just bond it or cap it...I'll update when I have some news :)
Blessings

Charity Water update

Well, we have 7 days left and after a deposit tomorrow, we will be (hopefully) over $800. That's the good news. The bad news is we only have 7 days left and we are $200 under our goal!!! So if you were waiting for an opportune time to donate or know someone else who would love to donate to a good cause for goodness sake send them to our my charity:water page!!!!! www.mycharitywater.org/readathon
Charity:Water actually emailed us today and interviewed the girls about the readathon and how we did it. It was pretty cool. They got to share why and how we did it. Once it's up on their blog I will post the link. They are super excited and we are praying to meet goal, so help us reach it, pretty please :) What you will do for your kids, even grovel on the web for them;)
Blessings,
Angela

Little Orphan Annie

Well, not anymore!! She is now part of our family. Tim and I couldn't take everyone crying every.single.night. "We miss Daisy, Daisy used to sleep in our room, I can't sleep without Daisy."

Apparently none of us could. Mostly because of the crying.

But we have been scouring Petfinder.com since we were at the beach looking for potential doggies. Not too young, not too old, not too big, not too small. Not a pit bull, not a pit bull. Did I say that already?? You would not believe the amount of pit bulls on there!

We emailed a woman about an hour away who was fostering a beagle/terrier mix. She was 6 months old and adorable. I fell in love <3

The woman emailed us back and said that Annie was available. So I filled out an application and we picked her up at 11 this morning :) She has the features of a Jack Russell and a Beagle, and she is stinkin cute! She only weighs 14 pounds, and she probably won't get much bigger. It's a huge difference from 100 pounds to 14!! The kids are in absolute love with her. She follows them around everywhere, and viceversa! She won't replace Daisy, but she is a member of our family and we will love her, and play with her, and call her George...er...Annie.

We interrupt your sadness with a beach vacation...

Ok, so technically we weren't supposed to get here until tonight. But we got here about 4ish Monday. We couldn't take being home when Tim brought Daisy in and came home alone. So we said our very sad goodbye's to our loving pet and got in the van and drove to the beach. Tim joins us tonight and we are very excited. We really miss him. We are getting ready to go sit on the porch and check out our 25 lbs of shells we got on our approximate 4 mile walk last night. I am seriously aching right now. My poor hubby has been working like crazy and is really ready to get here and start vacation.
We are staying in a very nice beach house, so thank you Jeanie and Bill!! It's nice to be here early too because the beach is nearly empty! It's really cool. We are gonna go check out the pier tonight and walk around down near the bridge. We are hanging at the beach every day except Friday, we are going to head to the aquarium. The kids are excited because besides the fact that they love the aquarium, we get to ride the ferry. I know you probably think my kids are some deprived youngens, but it's pretty cool. Continue to pray for the kids. Amber couldn't sleep last night thinking about Daisy, and it's going to be really hard going back home and she's gone. Tim and I are debating if we should get a dog before winter or after. The kids really want one now, but we aren't sure. Anyway, my kids are going crazy to look at their shells and I'm holding them up...so blogging time's up. Have a great rest of the week and I will resume some time next week. We come back Monday and have poetry Tuesday, so it will probably be the end of the week before I get on here again. Happy Labor Day!!
Blessings!

Another Deposit!

Hey there! I just wanted to let you know I just rolled another $37 in pennies!! In case you don't know how long it takes, it takes a really, really long time to do that. Hours. We also had another $12 in cash too. So another $49 down. So exciting!! If you'd like to join us in our efforts or see how we're doing swing by our site:
www.mycharitywater.org/readathon

Camping

Sorry for the long lapse in posts, we had company for the long weekend. My hubby's brother and his wife and son visited for about 4 days. We had a great time and my kids miss them already. But now I must prepare for a weekend camping trip. Camping is fun. Packing for camping with 4 kids. Not so fun. Having to count skivy's for 6: not fun. Making sure everyone has both of their shoes: not so fun. How many towels? Bathing suits. Bug spray. Food. I mean holy cow. That's a lot of stuff for one person to remember. And when we get there and Amber doesn't have pj's or Claire has one shoe...Who is the person to blame??? Momma. That's right. yep.

Anyway, I have been pretty excited that my garden has been coming in. I picked some basil today!!! That is so amazing compared to last year when my lovely dog ate about the only 2 veggies that grew. A tomato and a green pepper. I did have a few cayenne's come in and they were great, but that was all. This year we are trying cherry tomatoes, basil, okra, cucumbers, green peppers, cayenne peppers, squash, carrots, radishes, and green beans. Everything is coming in great. I'm only 2 weeks in and it's looking promising :)
I hope that you all have a super relaxing weekend and I'll be back next week with lots of pictures!!
Blessings!

Last day of school

Last Monday we tilled our garden and planted. I already have stuff sprouting!! It's very exciting. I can't wait to have fresh veggies growing.
Last week we went to the Celtic festival. We had a great time. They dress the kids up and we walked around for a while. The kids got to hold a giant sword, watch a dog herd ducks, see a bag pipe parade, and some very cool artifacts. We did leave earlier than anticipated because of rain, but it was a fun day.
We've been busy getting the house ready for company this weekend. Getting all of our yard work and a few things around the house. I repainted our kitchen chairs and our kitchen. I repainted all of our white trim. It's crazy how banged up stuff can get in such a short period of time. I'm really wanting to paint our kitchen orange, but that will have to wait until fall or winter. Right now I'm done with painting.
Ok, now about school. We have officially had our last day. Claire has a few more days left of math and Amber has a few more days of Jr. Analytical Grammar. We will work on our Latin and math over the summer, but I have no big plans as far as what we'll get done over our vacation. Every year I make these huge plans for our summer education, and then when it's time to start school I'm all like "Oh, we were supposed to get this done over summer. Man." I have some stuff that we might do or that we can do, but I'm not saying "WE ARE DOING THIS" at all. I guess I'm finally at a place where I'm being realistic about how things really go down around here! Honestly, summer is my vacation too. I'm tired after a school year. All the planning, teaching, planning, dealing with nonsense. I'm ready for some time off. I have lots of cool things planned for our summer time fun. It'll be great. I love summer.
Well, I'm tired from our day of errands. with 4 kids. Goodnight
blessings :)

Great Post from Childlight USA

I just read a great post over at Childlight USA. It is a Charlotte Mason blog that I follow. This post is about becoming a Charlotte Mason teacher. The author tells us how to shift ourselves from how we were taught (which, at least for me, was pretty unsuccessful; for the most part), and to use Mason's methods (which have been proven time and again to really work) in our homeschools. I loved it and will probably be reading and re-reading it several more times over the summer!

Our very restful weekend

I hope you all had a wonderful Mother's Day! We did. I finally got my wheelbarrow (no, I'm not a total weirdo) that I have been wanting forever! The kids all bought me geraniums and we went out to eat. It was a great day. We just came home and had a fun day together (and no one else came over). It was amazing.

My hubby's camping with his brother this weekend and the kids and I are just hanging out. Having a restful, peaceful weekend. I've been working very late getting some painting done, mostly because I don't sleep well when I'm the only person responsible for the safety of the children. So I crash on the sofa around 2ish with my baseball bat, only to be woken around 6:30 by someone who has to use the bathroom. Because mom really needs to know every bodily function you have. even if the sun is not up yet. And I've only had about 4 hours of sleep. Yay. Pee. Back to bed please. thank you.

We had some new people move in down the street who allow their 3 year old to play outside. alone. Sometimes the 5 year old is babysitting. I think I figured out what's going on. When we bought our house, the agent neglected to tell us that it is highly recommended that you be as slack in your parenting as possible to live here. That must be it. I really can't think of any other possible explanation. At least another nice explanation. The alternative is just sad.

Ya, there it is. I also don't recommend going to bluntcard.com if your are faint-hearted. There are a lot of very blunt cards there.

Well, I hope that you all have a great weekend. I will try to sleep after I repaint my kitchen and watch hours of Criminal Minds and America's Most Wanted. At least I'll be prepared. haha.

Blessings!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY!!!

Hope you have a very happy and blessed Mother's Day!!

Proverbs 31:28-31
Her children arise and call her blessed;
her husband also, and he praises her:
“Many women do noble things,
but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
but a woman who fears the LORD is to be praised.
Honor her for all that her hands have done,
and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.

Blessings! :)

Just a little something

Hi! Thought I'd write a few more times this week to compensate for testing next week. I just have a few different random topics to put on here.

1. We went to our environmental center Monday for our poetry in the park gathering. It was very cool. We are studying small mammals and we were going to investigate a beaver lodge. That was a nice change to our normal schedule.
   
2. Ok, my girls are totally excited about this Royal wedding. I have never been into the whole royalty thing, but my girls are loving all the hype about it. I will have to record it. There is no way I'll be up at 6 to watch someone I don't know get married to someone else I don't know :) I'll watch it after I've had a Mt. Dew. or two.
3. Noah totally loves speech therapy. Side note we wait in the library. I was always under the impression that the library was supposed to be a quiet place to get work done. We take some of our school work there and sit quietly in the "Oh, you homeschool" corner. But unfortunately it is very difficult to concentrate on our work. Mostly because our librarian spends the entire time screaming at the kids who are in her media center class. These kids aren't even being bad. She is screaming at them to be quiet. ok. And my kids spend the whole half-hour thanking me for homeschooling them.
   
4. I am super excited about our used curriculum sales coming up. I've made my list for what exactly we need for school next year. I'll post a detailed list. I know I did a "what we might use" but I know for sure now.
   

So that's my weird list for the day :) Hope that someone out there enjoyed it
Blessings!

Our Easter Day

Testin Time

Yes, I spelled it wrong on purpose. I just received our email that our testing materials will arrive tomorrow or Wednesday.
In the first few years we tested with the Woodcock-Johnson III. I really liked it for the first two years. The third year we tested later in the day and it made a big difference in results. We also had to use a different testing facility than we had previously. The tester let Amber give up a little too easily so she didn't try quite so hard when she realized that the tester let her move on. I started researching different testing options and wasn't really sure which route to take.
I found the CAT 5 test and researched it pretty thoroughly. We tried it out last year and Amber loved it. Well, I mean it's testing. Love may be a strong word, but she really liked it in comparison to the Woodcock-Johnson III. She tested very high in several areas. She was timed, but she had the option to read the questions, and re read them if necessary. The WJ was an oral test. Amber is a visual learner, which means that she does better when she can read the questions herself and think about it.
The test is fill in the bubble, which I was also kind of worried about. We had never taken a test like that before. We just talked about it before hand and after each smaller section we went over her answers to make sure they matched up. That she didn't skip any or mismatch them. That if there are 20 questions we make sure she answered 20 and that she doesn't have any missing ones.
The WJ test is great for auditory learners. Children who do better with having the questions read aloud will do wonderfully with this test. The math is a worksheet, but there are questions that are read aloud for math as well. The moderator writes each answer and scores the test right there. It is very nice to have instant results. The CAT 5 takes about a week or two to come in. They can email or send you a hard copy (usually) depending on your preference.
To administer the CAT 5 you do not have to have a degree of any kind which makes it parent/homeschool friendly. A lot of other tests require a degree in order to use them in your homeschools.
I, obviously, am not a testing consultant of any kind, this is just my opinion of the two tests. They both are very competent tests for your child, it just is dependent on your child's individual learning style. I hope that this was helpful to you if you are unsure about what to use to test.
Blessings!

Even mom's get sick

Ok. It happened. Mommy got sick. Why is it that when we get sick we get SICK? Can't I just get the sniffles?? Why do I have to get wiped-out, stay in bed, head's exploding sick?? I don't have time to get sick. There is toooo much to do. I wanted to paint my bedroom. I wanted to plant flowers. I wanted to play with the kids. But I had to get sick. I spent half the day laying around. Then while Tim was finishing the fence I kept my eyes on the kids. But I was too cruddy to do anything else. I did have a productive weekend though.

Friday night and Saturday morning I totally redid the girls room. I primed and painted the irritating stripes that were in there. I took all the junk everywhere, organized, and made it pretty pretty. I also called the folks at Hoarders and asked them to come help my beautiful daughters. They are hoarders. I threw away almost 3 trash bags full of junk. 30 gallon trash bags. Not those cute little kitchen bags. These girls are the real deal.
Amber had more paper under her bed than Staples. As crazy as that is, I found 9 pairs of her new socks were hiding under there. That wasn't all though. Every place that could house drawings or pencils or bent up paper clips or fabric scraps, was completely filled to the brim with such things!! When my girls came home from their sleep over and found a beautiful new room waiting for them, they also received a rude awakening. Mama don't play no mo. (Ya, that's right. I said mo. )
I better not find ANYTHING ANYWHERE EVER!!
So I cleaned out their room, and my room. And my closet. And now I'm sick. But that's ok. I'm sitting in bed blogging, watching the Red Sox beat the yankees. That's a good night here. Beckett has struck out five of those sox haters already. Tim's brother is actually at Fenway right now the lucky jerk. Hope you all have a great night and I'm hoping to blog and add pictures soon. I'm also hoping that the Sox win this game so they aren't 0-7 anymore.
Blessings and Go Sox!

Almost forgot to title this one....

My blog friends! I am writing this from my new laptop. My amazingly wonderful husband purchased it for me and I love it. My friends very amazing (today's word of the day amazing) husband got us a sweet sweet deal. So even though I no longer facebook, I don't have a phone with internet, and I have to ask my 10 year old how to play the Wii, I have joined the century and now own a laptop. It' beautimous. I love it. Did I say that already? ok.
We have been very fortunate the last few weeks. Not only did I get this fantastic treat, but I also got another in my backyard. That's right folks. I am currently looking out my kitchen window at my nearly completed fence. We decided that it financially wise to put up one side for two reasons. A. We couldn't afford to fence in the whole thing without going into debt (that we just paid off totally. For the last time) and B. to keep from getting a lawsuit if the 2 year old next door gets hurt while we're gone since he loves our fence like Jack loves beanstalks. I thought it was a wise decision.
We did some boring stuff like getting Tim's car fixed. yay. But it was nice to be able to afford to get it fixed up.
Ooh! I got my hall recarpeted. The forest green carpet that showed every molecule of oxygen or anything else is gone. we go and lay on our nice new carpet and Nate makes carpet angels. My strange homeschool children.
I still need to post pictures of my new living room. Befores and afters. I promise I will. The girls are supposed to go to a sleepover Friday night and I'm hoping to get their room done. I am doing a Paris theme in there with black and pink and ditching the stripes. I'm also going to be doing some "mommy organizing". Which means I'm probably going to be hearing alot of "Hey where's my ....." in my future. Tough. You had it shoved under your bed for 4 months. I don't care if your super special silly band that glows in the dark got thrown away. Or sucked up in my vacuum. -eh that's another post I guess. Ranting from under a ten year old's bed. By-me.
I'm hoping to get our room done too so I can rest till Tim's brother and his family come down. I'm sure I'll find a gazillion more things to do before then though. I'm cursed with over active brain cells.
Next time I'm gonna talk about our testing choices since the blog is supposed to be about homeschooling. I guess.
Also, just a side note: As I'm typing this Blogger has been kind enough to point out my mispellings. Why is it that homeschool, facebook, and mispellings are spelled wrong; but gazillion isn't??? Just curious. Ok, have a great night.
blessings :)

I have a blog?? I totally forgot!!

I know I'm super pathetic. I haven't been very faithful in the blogging department lately. Tim has been working till 9 every night which means I'm solo for bedtime nonsense, I mean duty. Every time one of the children gets up I have to go up there and put them back (and duct tape them in bed-haha) Which means if I'm down here in the computer room I have to hoof in up both flights of stairs to deal with their "problem". I don't think so. It's easier to sit on the sofa and watch for their doors to open and tell them to go back to bed. No movement required. Why is it that just the extra 1-2 hours of him not being here and the whole pajama, teethbrushing, pottying, stay in your bed, no in your bed, no you can't sleep on the floor, get into your bed, under your blankets, no you can't sleep in your underwear it's 30 degrees outside, put your clothes back on, no more water girls, no you can't have water, because you'll pee in your bed, because then I'll have to wash every blanket and sheet you can find to sleep with, no you can't sew in bed tonight, because I vacuumed up a needle in here this morning, yes you can read for 15 mins, because it's getting late, because I'm tired, because I dealt with all of this nonsense all day, and now I'm tired, yes you can go to the bathroom AGAIN, put your pants back on, oh man I need a valium or something. GET BACK IN BED!!! tires me out so much??? I don't get it.
I spent last Thursday painting my living room. It now matches my sectional that Tim bought for me. I no longer have a dark gray sectional and green walls with Christmas Green carpet going up the stairs. (The carpet used to be in the living room too, but I ripped that up the day we got the keys!) We are having the stairs and upstairs hall re-carpeted next week. We will just have to wait on the bedrooms (which have red carpet for some strange reason. Maybe the Clauses used to live here or something.)
I also (when we had spring for like a week) planted tons of stuff in the yard. Lilies, hollies, a tulip tree, tulips, dianthum, something else, sunflowers, honeysuckle, another flower I forgot, strawberries, and jasmine. I found out that my sycamore tree is trying to get into my house too. I was planting flowers and hit a root. Right next to my foundation. So I had to get the axe and deal with that. I also have several other roots above the ground getting ready to demolish my concrete path. That's my next project. yay.
Oh, we are now debt free too! It has been an exciting week around here. The only thing we have is the house which we are now starting to chip away at.
Regarding School: Has anyone been trying to figure out what to use for school next year? I keep going back and forth. I need to figure out what I need so I can make a budget for the convention book fair. I still have a little time and I'm hoping that I'll even be able to go to the book fair. That's the weekend my husband's brother and his wife and their son are coming down. It may be an in and out kinda thing, but I LOVE the book fair. When I nail down everything I wasn't to use I will post a list. And when I put my pictures into the computer I will post some of the new living room too. And my nice new privacy fence. Which is going to be started this weekend. We did the front part a few weeks ago. Now we are going to start the side fence. So the neighbor's 2 year old won't climb into my yard. when we aren't home. and try to swim in our pool (when we put it up). My friend Lisa uses me and my neighborhood as an example to her husband of how good they have it. They have a neighbor who steals their animals. I wish I had one of those neighbors. I offered for her to take my dog home. Maybe we'll get lucky. ya right. Anyway, sorry about my laziness. I don't know what I was thinking :)
Blessings!