We gave the baby his first bath today.  We had all the boys help.  We did the same with Travis when he came home. 

We finally decided on a name.  We chose Landon Thomas.  I know it is not even one we were considering, but it was funny how we decided.  When the midwife was getting things ready she said, "I'm getting the landing zone ready.".  My husband thought she said Landon and he really liked it.  We told the boys they could pick the middle name and the names they came up with were Tom and Jerry or Ben 10.  We went with Thomas and it just so happens that my husband's uncles name is Thomas.

We had the baby today at 10:54 am. He is 7 lbs. 8 oz. and 20 inches long. We labored for 9 hours, which is a terribly long time considering the last 2 were born within 2 hours. He is doing so well. He does have a bit of a low temp, but we are working to bring it up. We still don't have a name. Pictures to follow when we come home.

Can you believe I almost forgot to post our school schedule.  This is why I joined the blog, to keep myself accountable and let our friends and family know what we are doing.  We started 4 weeks ago to get ready for baby. I figure we will take 4 weeks off once he arrives.
Bible
We are using coloring pages.  It is called A-Z Bible.   We are on letter I.  This way all the boys can participate.

Math
I switched from Horizon's Math to Math-U-See.  Even though I already did K with Emmett, I started him in Alpha.  We really like the format.  He didn't struggle in Math, but I didn't see the concepts being explained in Horizons. Wyatt enjoys having his own workbook too.

Phonics/Spelling
I am using Alphabet Island Level 2B with Emmett. It is a strong Spelling program and finishes up the phonics that we missed.  Wyatt is learning how to write better and we are learning how to put sounds together. 

Grammar
Well Trained Mind (haven't worked it in yet)

History
Beautiful Feet-Early American HIstory
I haven't worked this in yet, because I haven't found a good way to make a timeline that will work for us.

Copywork
Draw, Write, Now
I haven't used this yet, because he has so many spelling words to copy, I really haven't seen a need for it.  I will work it in after baby.

Music
Piano, starting in October. 

Co-op
We start the 3rd Thursday in September.  The boys will be signed up for Gym, Art, and an elective of their choice.  I am hoping for Science. 

  Wow, this is only for PK and 1st grade.  I hope it doesn't pile up as the years progress.

Everyone keeps asking me if I am ready for baby #4. Well as of today, I still don't have my bag packed for the hospital.  I am sure I will only have my clothes on for an hour before they make be bare all, so I can wear the same ones home right?  I haven't bought any diapers yet.  Don't they give you a pack at the hospital?  I finally washed the baby's clothes last night in between Women's Gymnastics and Michael Phelps.  My husband did say they dress the baby once he is born anyway.  However, we did need to get the carseat ready, so I washed the cover.  I also thought a light blanket might be in need if they don't let us take it from the hospital.  Poor, poor #4.  I hope we can figure out a name for this one.  Still undecided.  That happened last time too.  Colby, Collin, Levi, Eli.  Oh, the choices.  Please don't ask middle names. 

On Monday we were playing outside as usual.  The kids tend to push and ride bikes up and down our driveway and ride down.  Travis is no exception.  He pushes his little riding toy to the top and scoots down as fast as he can.  Well he decided to take his rider across the grass.  As he did he pushed it over our sprinkler system cover and was stung by a Yellow Jacket.  He came towards me crying.  I can't move as fast as normal so I was waiting until he got to me at the porch.  Once he got to the sidewalk he kept falling down.  I was trying to get to him, but the neighbor got there fist.  He saw a number of YJ's on his legs and started swatting them.  Poor Travis thought he was getting a swat from the neighbor.  He must have been mortified.  I was.  We found 5 stings.  One on his hand and 4 on his knee.  I dressed his  stings and gave him some medicine.  He seemed to be fine.  On Tuesday morning he woke up with a knee the size of a baseball and his hand looked like a club.  He also had a croupy cough throughout the night.  I took him into the doctor and they gave me something to help with the swelling and he seems to be fine now.  His stings are pretty bruised, but he is a trooper. 

We were pretty surprised at the size of this nest. 
He isn't a small kid, but this was taken after 2 days of treatment.  

One of my favorite things we did was to go to the Blueberry Hill.  We were there less than an hour and picked 5 lbs. of blueberries.  The boys were so excited.  Wyatt kept screaming "Look, I found the biggest one."  and "Look at this bush, it has the biggest, juiciest berries ever.".
Travis did a great job picking until Daddy let him eat one. Then he kept saying, "I picked a blue one and put it in my mouth." 
First of all, who does Emmett look like?  Emmett had a good time too.  He tasted one berry from each bush of every size.  He came to the conclusion that the bigger berries that were bluest were the best.  The smaller berries and the ones with pink on them were very tart.   I wish I would have brought a notebook so we could have charted the experience and we could have counted it as a day of school. 
See, look how big.
After we finished we ordered Blueberry Ice Cream.  

We went to the fair a week ago.  Our neighbor met us there with his children.  It was very fun. Here is a picture of Emmett and Daddy.  Emmett looks a bit concerned because there is a sign on the back of the seat that says "Danger" Do not rock seat.  Well Daddy laughs in the face of danger and rocked the seat. 

Travis and his girlfriend Jess rode a lot of rides together. 
Wyatt's favorite ride was the FUN SLIDE.  Our neighbor said his face was priceless on the way down but by the time he got to the bottom he was smiling ear to ear.

First of all, I haven't been very faithful in updating my blog.  I am busy uploading a bunch of photos to post so you can see how our summer has looked.  As far as our pregnancy, we are due between Aug. 23 and Aug. 28.  Depending on if you go by the wheel or the ultrasound.  I had an appointment on Friday and it revealed I was at a 1 1/2.  On Sunday, I had to call the doctor because I had unexpected things were happening.  This has never happened in our past pregnancies.  I never went in because we had church and then a Sunday School picnic and Monday everything let up.  On Tuesday it happened again.  I had to take Travis to the doctor (another post), so I thought I would just drop by the OB.  Well come to find out I am now at a 3.  I am a 3rd of the way there and I didn't even have to do any work.  I have another appointment on Tuesday.  I canceled my appointment for Friday.  I have never been early, but if I get to go early I wouldn't mind.

I just stumbled upon Lookybook through another bloggers site. I think it is really a neat way to read books and decide if you want to purchase them.

Today the boys were playing with the neighbor boy.  They were very into whatever they were doing and I was leaving to run some errands.  I called them over to say goodbye and they informed me they had a captive.  I guess when they were playing by the wood in the driveway they saw a skink come out.  They tried to catch him by stepping on his tail, this broke his tail.  Then they got wise and put a sand toy over it so he could breath and then two bike helmet so he couldn't move.  All of this was surrounded by a toy rake and shovel, just in case he broke free.  Then they went and found a book about lizards and classified it.  Since Emmett is the only one that can read he read the information to the other 2.  They thought it was a Western Skink, but I looked it up and it is a 5 Lined Skink.  I was more impressed that they thought to look it up than actually catching it and building a fortress around it.

The prisoner
The rest of the prisoner.
The contraption.
3 very proud boys.
The findings.

This morning as we were getting ready for the day, my boys were standing around in their underwear.  Our middle son, Wyatt, informed me that he had 3 pairs of underwear on and our oldest had 2 on.  My first thought instead of giggling was that I would have to wash all 3 of the pairs if I didn't make them take them off.   Then I giggled and asked them to wear only one pair today.  Wyatt, being the smarty pants he is said, "O.K., I will take 2 pairs off to make one pair".  I was amazed since we haven't really started him on any math at all.  We are still working on writing numbers.  I asked him if he knew what he just did and he didn't.  So a quick lesson in subtraction was given.  Then he said, "Mom, what does this mean?"  I just told him he was growing up and we probably have an easier year in math coming up that I thought.  Grandma Jill the math teacher would be proud, however I don't suggest her students doing their math in their underwear.

This is my favorite time of year.  Planning the next school year.  I think I like it more than actually teaching it.  I get grand ideas in my head how the school year will go and what we want our children to learn.  Well from my past experience, which is only one technical year of hsling and 1 1/2 years not recorded, the first day of school is the most horrific experience.  Just an example, 2 years ago our pencil boxes ended up on the floor and scattered and the boys on their beds.  I had the whole day planned out and we covered about 10 minutes.  Last year was better, I just scheduled 10 minutes for each boy and added minutes every other day or so.  I feel I am getting to know how our boys work.  I get a lot of my inspiration from my SIL, who has 4 schooling this year, the oldest being 9.  So during our planning stages we talk very regularly.  This year she told me she was making a planner for herself.  I thought, "wow, what a great idea.  I really need to do this too".  I am a pretty organized person and how fun it would be to put this together.  I also felt that since we will be stationed somewhere else next year that we really need to be keeping track of our schooling better.  Since I am only schooling 2 this year, I went simple.  My SIL informed me that her planner had to be bound into 2 separate books because she is so organized.  HEHE.  She placed her book on her mantel until they began and instructed me to do so too.  Since we can't see each other's I decided to post my planner on my blog for her to see.  I hope it helps out some beginning families. 

As a side note I had my planner bound the day the announcement was made the Schoolhouse Planner was released.

I got most of my printables from Donna Young.  I mostly recreated them to fit our family.

I had it bound at Staples. 
  I began with a 2008-2009  Yearly Calendar beginning in July.  This will help me count my days.
Next  is a Goals section.  We have never set yearly goals for our boys, but it sounded like a good place to start in choosing curriculum.
This sheet has side column for the subject, then the goal, and the last column is for the books and materials we will be using to accomplish this goal. I have a seperate sheet for each boy.
Course of Study is something I wasn't sure I wanted to put into this planner, but the more I thought about it, I had to due to the fact that we have so many extra materials to accomplish our goals besides the main curriculum.  I broke this into 3 sections.  (Subject, Books/Materials, and Main Curriculum)  My pages have 2 subjects listed and there are pages for each boy.  (Phonics/Math, Grammar/Copy Work, History/Science, Geography/Music, and Bible/Extra Curricular)

Here is the meat of the planner.  I have a title page for each month as to not have 2 blank pages in a row.  It really bugged me to have 2 blank pages.
Here is my month at a glance to schedule appointments and field trips.  I hope it helps me not over commit.  I typically don't, but why not be prepared.
I have a curriculum key after each month because on the Weekly Lesson Plan I don't want to be writing out everything and there isn't enough room to  do so.  I also want daddy to be able to decode our day if he has to take over.
Our  Weekly Lesson Plan.  I  have the days of the week across the top and the subjects down the side.  I added a blank column and a column for notes and missed assignments. 
After all of the months of meat, I have a reading log for each child and another one for family readings.
This log is broken up in to 3 columns.  Title /Author, Date, and Rating (1-5)
Lastly, I have an Important Website section. 
3 columns again Address, Username, and Password.
If anyone made it through all of this and would like a copy of my tables or needs any further information, please don't hesitate to ask.  I am actually in the process of making the boys a assignment book that they can keep track of their activities and duties too.  That will come later.  I am one page away from finishing it.  And yes I put it on my mantel, but it was kept in the box so it didn't get dirty.

We took advantage of a nice summer morning and took the kids to the beach.  It was kind of chilly, but the kids didn't seem to mind.  Emmett and Wyatt are fish and Travis is still warming up to the idea of swimming.
Getting used to the water.
Daddy making sure he was used to the water.
Wyatt our Olympic Swimmer in training.
Just the guys.

Our oldest has had a bike with training wheels for 2 years now.  I figured this year we would take him to a school parking lot and teach him to ride without the training wheels.  Well, so far we haven't gotten around to it.  But, daddy has been raising his wheels every so often.  He has been complaining that the wheels are too high and he wanted them back down.  We wouldn't give in.  We told him he wouldn't be using the wheels forever.  So yesterday the kids were riding their bikes in the driveway and our oldest figured out that he could go down the hill without touching the training wheels to the ground.  He bravely said, "Mom get these wheels off, I don't need them anymore."
The first attempt ended up in the back of dad's car.
The second attempt went well.
Coming back around the cars.
At the top again.

The local Community College had its annual Free Fishing Day.  They stocked a small part of the bay with 1500 Rainbow Trout and supplied all the gear you need to catch one.  They also provided free cleaning of the fish and free hot dogs.  I am sure they provided free hand sanitizer too.    I was so impressed with the event.  There were a ton of volunteers to help.  The DNR was there to help out too.  They even had a Coast Guard Simulated Rescue in the middle of the day.  We took the neighbor boy with us for this event.  Emmett was the only one who caught a fish, but Wyatt had a bite on his line.  I caught the most painful sunburn on my back.  Great Grandma cooked up the fish today for lunch.  All the boys ate it  and asked for more. 

Emmett had his piano recital after his first year of piano lessons.  He played a song called "What Can I Do" and "Jesus Loves Me".  He practiced both songs for over a month and had both of them memorized.  He was the youngest student that his teacher had.  The next oldest was 8.  Grandma Jill would have been proud.  His timing was just right.  He had one spot where he stuttered, but he was so nervous.  He picked it up just like a professional.   I think I was more nervous than him.  We are so proud of his dedication and time he put forth for  piano this year.

This weekend we celebrated Travis' 2nd birthday.  Daddy is gone again so we didn't have a huge party.  The grandmas came over for a few days to help get things back to normal in the way of cleaning and laundry.  We took the boys to play Put-Put.  I started out having them follow the rules of one at a time, but soon found that it worked better if they just had a free for all. 

Does anyone have a good LA program out there? We will be using the last book in Alphabet Island this year and it really focuses on Spelling and some more phonics rules. I believe it is geared towards 2nd grade. Even though Emmett is really only in 1st grade this Fall, I am just using the next book in the series. However I really want to focus on sentence structure and parts of a sentence with him to get him writing paragraphs by years end. What does your child need to know before you make the leap into LA verses phonics? He is reading well above grade level. I am hoping this post gets a lot of hits because I am looking for lots of options. Thanks, Lisa

Emmett had his Homeschool Track and Field Day on Tuesday.  I had the neighbors watch the other two boys because they didn't have childcare this year.  He got to compete with some of his friends from church that decided to homeschool this year.  He didn't get a medal this year, but he had fun. 
Standing Long Jump

Crab Walk

3 Legged Race with Hannah

Obstacle Course