This was kind of fun and pointless - so I did it! I've had such a ridiculous week last week that I needed to do something pointless, if you know what I mean?  

   So here is a map of all the states in the USA that I have been to. Not bad since it covers over half the states in the USA. Since I have lived outside the states for almost 16 years this is quite an accomplishment!

visited 27 states (54%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

I'm finding each year more and more difficult to put up with what we call the Christmas season.  Seriously, what does spending way more money than you have, stressing ourselves out over cookies, shopping, events and a huge to do list, all for one day?  What does ANY of it have to do with the precious gift of our Saviour Jesus Christ.  Do you not think he's in heaven sitting at the right hand of God shaking His head?  He came to us in the most humble of states, put Himself in the hands of humans not to mention in the form of a helpless baby.  He came as a poor man's son.  Our Almighty God in Heaven did this for us.  So we celebrate in this manner?  Seems so inappropriate.  I don't dislike decorations, singing, and small tokens of a gift.  I'm referring to what the world thinks we should be doing to have the ever alluded Christmas spririt.  I'd really like to have a survey done on people after Chrsitmas and find out if they felt they had accomplished the true meaning of Christmas.  I doubt very many could answer that in a positive way.  I listen to Christan radio and become appalled at what I hear even there.   I feel very sad to the point I wish to just sleep the season away.  Our tree is not yet decorated, it only has lights right now and I find I like it that way very much.  I'm sure it will get its adornment this weekend.  I have boxes of decorations just sitting in the basement and I don't care if I ever get them out.  I will do a Christmas letter but it probably won't go out until after the first of the year.  I will bake a few different kinds of cookies to have around for guests and to share with the neighbors.  I will play Christmas music on our Cd player and I will sing loudly with it.  I have purchased gifts from internet shopping, but I did not go overboard and the bonus is I didn't have to leave the house!  This is my favorite part of all!   There's some other things I haven't mentioned, but it's small scale stuff.  Because I have not congested up our lives with things to see and do all of December, we can spend more time just meditating on what Jesus did for us.  I can try to feel the awe of Mary as she held God in her arms that first time.  Can you imagine?  What would it be like to raise up a child that didn't sin?  Can you imagine?  How would you feel watching your son, your God , being nailed to a cross to die?  Can you imagine?  I can't but I sure like to try.  By keeping our lives simpler and quiet, we can try to give what God wants and that is all of us.  What we have turned His gift into, a horse and pony show, a circus, an excuse to be excessive.  I pray that as each year goes by that we stand back and take a true look at what it's become and do our part to bring it back to a more humble existence.  A God centered existence just like EVERY DAY should be.  Ok, enough ranting.

The boys and I have finally moved into the science portion of Volume 3 chapter 1 using the supplement.  I'm ready to take a stab at using this book.  I will still grapple I'm sure and I was hoping to finish it up by the 23rd of December (gasp! remember, I don't need to get ready for Christmas) But I don't think this will happen so we'll be starting the new calendar year (another ridiculous holiday) trying to finish this off.  I will enjoy learning about the weater patterns, wind, oceans, and navigation.  We haven't spent much time on any of this yet so I'm looking forward to this.  I was laid up with my back for a couple of weeks so I got the chance to pray over the supplement and God showed me what books we already had on hand to use and the Milliken worksheets to help with retention.  I also have enlisted some help with our writing curriculum so I'm praying over that one, too.  I hope and pray that a tutor besides myself will lessen the stress over this topic.

News on the farm:

We are heading into our cold season so the guys are out today winterizing the animals.  Hopefully we have a better handle on it this year over last year.  We are also the proud owners of two Belted Galloway girls.  I'm so excited to be adding these to our herd of cattle.  They will be a striking addition.  Our grassfed beef is well on its way and we might have some for sale this summer.  Depends on how calving goes.  There's going to be so many new babies next summer I can hardly wait.  Calves, kids, turkeys?, kittens.  Peaches the goat is doing a pretty good job keeping us in milk.  I have to buy extra if we have company, but for everyday we have what we need.  God is good and provides for our needs.

I think my garden is done now.  It's very cold and we've had some deep freezing.  I did have some spinach and lettuce but the chickens and ducks have been munching on it.  The boys pulled up one of the turnip crops and we have them stored for the animals and some for us.  There is still some small cabbages I may try to resuce although I have tons left still in the fridge.  You can eat only so much cabbage.  We love it, but really!  For next season, I'm going to start converting my garden into a lasagne garden.  I want to get away from the tilling and then all the weeds after that.  I think this other method will help with that.  Since the garden is so big, it may take me awhile to switch it over.  Plus it all depends on my physical condition next summer.  The conventional way would require more bending over for weeding and the new way would require me to move mulch stuff around.  We'll see how it goes.  For right now, I have to be satisfied with looking at the new seed catalogs that have started trickling in. 

I want to wish you all a very Merry Christmas.  Remember God's gift to the Whole World.

   I know I'm loooooong overdue for an update. I'll try to get on soon, but there has been alot going on around here. Please pray for us as we deal with some situations in our life that are less than pleasant!

   In the meantime here is a sale that is going on at Currclick starting today! If you pop over please us the affiliate link box in the right hand sidebar as we get a small commision your your purchase at no cost to you - Thank you! - Deedee

The beginning of this month was pretty slow to start.  We began our Weaver again and Satan quickly got involved in our lessons.  I had to pray, pray, pray for him to leave us alone.  Pray is a wonderful, underused tool we have to stay connected with our Lord and Saviour.  I find that starting my day in pray helps and does praying with the boys each morning.  I really believe this is key to a great day.

Our first unit involves learning about the many different early explorers of the western world.  One of the difficulties lay in beginning the supplement for my older son.  I still haven't used it.  What we ended up doing instead of heavy duty research on all these people, is I bought from Little Homeschool in the Woods their New World Explorers CD unit study.  This gave us lots of projects and lapbooking and notebooking things to do to spice this unit up.  I do not hesitate to bring in other curriculum if I feel led to do so to enhance what we are doing in Weaver.  I feel Weaver can get to heavy in writing, when something like this can be way more fun if you get into it more, especially if you have boys.  This is a boy unit, in my opinion, and I felt we needed to DO this unit, not research and write about it.  Learning about why and how and when these guys were out there is very interesting stuff.  But it's also information that is not overly necessary either.   Some of the projects have been making a quadrant, dehydrating meat, creating an Explorers Newspaper, making a captain's log which is to be journaled in and lots more to come.

The Bible to go along with this is Joshua, chapter one.  He is entering into a new land with the tribe of Isreal.  Going in to conquer the land and the people there according to God's will.  So with that we've been discussing the call of God in our lives and that we are to go when called.  Being a child is training for adulthood and the calling of God.  Obeying your parents gives you an advantage of obeying God when you are grown.  Also to supplement this we are using Precept Homeschool curriculum on Joshua.  I'm also training the boys to study the Bible inductively.

Farm News:

Ben bought a tom turkey to go with the hen we hatched out in the spring.  He seems very happy, but I dont' think she's too impressed yet.  He basically saved her life.

We've aquired a new goat named Lita which is short for Rosalita.  She came from the same place as Peaches.  So far she's getting pushed around a lot and I feel I need to keep my eye on her closely to make sure she is getting food to eat in the barn since the other older ones try to keep her away.  She has a wonderful personality and I love her.  Can't wait for breeding season in January.  Peaches is still milking away and we have fresh milk everyday.  What a gift.  On the down side, our chickens are not laying right now.  Not happy about that at all.  We've also bred our Jersery girl adn hopefully our beef cow Stella.  I guess we'll see over the next few months if we were successful or not.  Blossom was A.I'd and Stella was bred the old fashioned way.  We also had to deal with conjunctivitis on her which was a pain.  Trying to stay organic can be difficult when you have sick animals.  We used anitbiotic eye stuff instead of going with an injection.

The garden is mostly done right now.  I just finished digging up carrots and onions and cut off the tops of the sunflowers.  I left the small carrots and onions in the garden to see how they fair over the winter.  It sure is wet around here and I feel they may rot before we get a good frost.  I lost lots of onions due to all the rain we've had and there's more on the way.  I can't even get the garden turned over because it's so wet.  I'll have to look at the mess until spring I'm afraid.  I hope to be able to at least get most of it cleaned up and burned.

Today the boys have been raking our leaves before this next rain moves in.  The goats love the dried leaves in the winter.  We bag them up and store them in the barn.  It gives them variety during the winter with their hay.  I would put them in the garden during the day to help clean up some of the stuff, but it's too muddy for that.

We have a busy November coming up and I'm very excited about it all.  My dear friends from Mississippi are coming for a visit in a couple of weeks and on that Saturday they are here, we're having a party with some friends from our church here at the house.  My daughter will be here today  until Saturday and hopefully again for a longer stay over Thanksgiving.  Our neighbors from our old house will be coming for Thanksgiving also so we'll have a houseful.  I think that's all the company for November.

I'm always a bit sad that summer is over and the garden is being put to rest for the long winter season, but this is actually a good thing for me right now since my hips have not been cooperating with what my ambitions have been and want to be.  I've been down more than up and having to rely on the boys to help with most of the outside work this past summer and fall.  I pray that over the winter I can get a handle on my situation and hopefully start the new season good as new.  Keep me in your prays regarding this.