Hi Friends,

I want to apologize for the fact that my blog has morphed into a perpetual info-mercial lately.  I've been trying to promote my ebooks and things, and maybe a bit too fervently, forgetting my real purpose for starting this blog. 

At any rate, I am continuing to give away a copy of "Haircuts For Little Men" every week through the summer, so please tell your friends so they can enter.  All they have to do is leave me a comment and a way to reach them.  Please read previous entries for the details.  I said I'd pick one for last week and will get to that at the end of this post.

Our summer is going nicely and we've had rain, rain and more rain here.  Our little bitty yard is an explosion of color and I love spending time out there with the kids.  My boys have been doing lots of scout activities which is a new thing for them this year.  We found a small, homeschool Christian scout troup that we love dearly.  New friends are being made and fun is being had.  They are learning good things too, and being boys together. 

 My girls are enjoying domestic bliss while they improve all their home-making skills and just get sweeter every day.  My oldest had such a great time in MD earlier this summer and although she started a trip blog, she never finished posting all her photos and telling her stories.  Maybe she'll have time someday?  She much prefers to just be doing anything other than being on the computer.  Anyway, she's been enjoying volunteering at our library and just started doing some math tutoring.  She's helping her cousin who is learning 6th grade algebra!  Go figure.  LOL.  Anyway, she's helping with fractions, multiplication and prime numbers...she's really great at math, I'm so proud of her. 

I'm a little sad that blogging seems to be taking a back seat to face-booking and twittering and whatever other social networking is popping up.  I still love to blog, but there are too many important "real" things going on here that steal my heart back from my former blogging addiction.  I'm not doing as much freelancing as I was, so my time on the computer is fragmented.  I think it is for the best.  My kids are growing up and now we are getting to be more of "peers" than "parents" in some ways.  It is sad to see them grow so quickly, but also exciting to see how much they have to offer as fellow sojourners!  My baby will be 11 this next week (although he looks much older since he is a big kid) and then I'll have another teen in Sept.  Wow. 

Anyway, talking about blogging, I was telling my friend Jill about how we are going out to the county fair this week to see if we got any ribbons, and she said "didn't you win best of show last year?"  Well, not that good!  But I couldn't quite remember what we won...so I went to my blog archives.  Cool!  I have also used my blog as a way to wrap up our year for a Christmas newsletter, etc.  It really has become a great archive of things in our lives, as long as we're writing regularly.  One of my other favorite friends is now mostly facebooking and her wonderful blog sits fallow.  (At least it was last time I checked.)  So sad!   My friend Jill again, was lamenting that folks used to write nice notes to publishers all the time, but now barely have time to shoot off an email to tell them thanks for the nice magazine article or some such thing.  I never though the computer would take the place of writing a letter, but it has. 

We are in a new era of communication.  Just add water.  :)  Instant everything.

Well, as I said earlier, I'm going to pick a winner from last week:

 jennifer at quiverfullfamily!  Congratulations!!!

I'll be sending your download right away. 

Happy Homeschooing Everyone!

Nancy

Don't forget to comment so I can enter you in this weeks giveaway!  Sorry, no mister linky, no frills, just cheap easy comments will get your name put in the proverbial hat. Good Luck!

I am honored to receive the Excellence in Blogcasting Award from Mel over at the Prepared Family.  Thank you so much for the kinds words!  Your encouragement and friendship mean more to me than you will ever know.

Now, I am supposed to bestow this honor on 15 other folks.  That might take me a bit of time to put together!  I will see what I can do--other than the leg work, it should be very easy with all the excellent blogs out there. 

I've been blessed several other times with various awards, but it is SO time consuming to post the pics.  I think this is the first time I have been able to do it, so if you are wondering why I never acknowledged YOUR award, please forgive me.  Hopefully, I commented back on your blog, even if I was unable to get it posted here.

I do appreciate it!  Thanks everyone!

Nancy

Ok, I just want to tell you to go visit this blog:  OldPathsMom.  I love to read her blog posts, and I love her sidebar.  Where can I get that KJV Bible thingy?  I love that!  And that countdown ticker...I want that too.  Maybe...anyway, her blog is tops!  You just can't get any better than that! 

And since you are here, watch me try to pat my own back.  OUCH.  (That hurt) Anyway, click on my sidebar...down there where the Heart of the Matter top homeschooling blogs is...nevermind, just click the link. 

I am not sure what it means but just saw that I was up at the number 2 slot. How fun!  I guess I have almost arrived.  LOL!

Happy Sunday everyone!  God Bless you,

Nancy

Hi friends!

Well, we were given several boxes of peaches to process, so we started that job.  Whew!  After all the tomatos we have done and okra, peppers...what's a few peaches?

My kids decided we needed to fly a kite today, but first we had to buy one.  Had to go to three stores, before we found one very pricey kit.  But we had a great time!  Packed a picnic, brought paper and crayons for leaf rubbings and enjoyed the day.  Then for dinner, the little guy (10) and I made spring rolls with cabbage, turkey, corn, peppers, onions, green beans and carrots.  YUM!  And, EASY.  That is good for me!

I love my sitemeter :)  You already know that.  Look at this entry:

Homeschooling Is LIfe By Details > Visit Detail Visit 30,864
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Domain Name		btcentralplus.com ? (Commercial)
IP Address		86.135.34.# (British Telecommunications)
ISP		British Telecommunications
Location		Continent  :  Europe Country  :  United Kingdom  (Facts) State/Region  :  Northamptonshire City  :  Rushden Lat/Long  :  52.2833, -0.5833 (Map)
Language		English (U.K.) en-gb
Operating System		Microsoft WinXP
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Javascript		version 1.3
Monitor		Resolution  :  1280 x 800 Color Depth  :  32 bits
Time of Visit		Sep 22 2008 3:12:19 pm
Last Page View		Sep 22 2008 3:56:37 pm
Visit Length		44 minutes 18 seconds
Page Views		14
Referring URL		http://www.homeschoo...ByHisGraceInColorado
Visit Entry Page		http://www.homeschoo...yHisGraceInColorado/
Visit Exit Page		http://www.homeschoo...GraceInColorado/758/
Out Click
Time Zone		UTC+0:00
Visitor's Time		Sep 22 2008 10:12:19 pm
Visit Number		30,864

I wish this dear friend from Rushden would have left me a comment!  44 minutes?  You spent that much time over here?  Wow.  That is so amazing.  I'd love to know what brought you over here to Homeschooling Is Life!  I'm so glad you had time to read some of my blogs and hope it was an encouragement to you.  If you come back by and see this, please stop for a moment and say hello!

Blessings,

Nancy

By now you have probably heard the flap about the flags.  If you haven't, well yesterday at the McCain/Palin rally they passed out many of the 12,000 flags that were leftover from the DNC--seems they were left at Coors Field (I know, it's not called that, but who can spell "Invesco?) by the good folks up there.  Well, the GOP's said they rescued them from the trash, the DNC said we stole them for a political ploy.

Well, they are American Flags so I guess we might as well have used them!  They sure looked grand there at the jet center, don't you think?!

 It was a great lesson for the kids and an experience they won't soon forget, and we all have sunburns to prove it!  We kept telling them it was history in the making.  It is fun being a part of history, not just reading about it.

This is the best photo I could get of the Alaskan Governor and Senator McCain.  We weren't willing to get there at 5:00 a.m. so we didn't get a good seat, er, I mean place to stand.  But nevertheless we had a wonderful time listening to several speakers and singing along with all the wonderfully patriotic songs (and a few pretty rauchus ones.)  I told my 13 year old son that he had better enjoy it because that was as close to being at a rock concert as he was ever going to get!)

The Gov. and Mr. McCain both had pretty powerful speeches.  Although we have already heard them speak (on TV) and online, it was positively electrifying there! Nothing like a good political rally to get your adrenaline going.  Did you see the video that the RNC had about Gov. Palin?  It had some beautiful footage of Alaska.  I loved the photo of her and the caribou--with the voiceover talking about her being a moose hunter...oh well, moose, caribou, whatever!  Now I know why I like her so much!

Just thought I would add these two pics of some very creative signage!

It is kind of small, but can you tell that the pit bull has...what else?  Big red lips drawn on the dog!  I heard that Sarah's "pit bull" line was ad-libbed.  Not sure if it was or not, but both parties are getting a lot of mileage out of it.  I thought it was great.

And this one is pretty cute too.  We saw these two kids near where we connected up to the LONG line to get in to the rally.  BTW, we saw tons of families there.  Kids everywhere! 

It was also a blessing to be with our friends.  We had the honor of standing by the parents of Adam Brickley.  (I just linked to his Google hits.  If you have time, be sure to watch or listen to some of his recent interviews in addition to checking out his blog.  But if you watch him on the Colbert show, just skip EVERYTHING before Adam comes on.  That guy Colbert uses some rank "humor" that will make you wince big-time.  He did a great job interviewing Adam though.) 

(Don't be surprised if you find that young man leading from the Oval Office someday!) 

Have a blessed homeschooling week!

Homeschooling IS Life!

Nancy

My dear friend "down under," Belinda from Lifestyle Homeschooling bestowed me with a wonderful gift!  She gave me the Excellent Blog award. 

Thank you so much!

The "rules" say - "By accepting this Excellent Blog Award, you have to award it to 10 more people whose blogs you find Excellent Award worthy. You can give it to as many people as you want but please award at least 10. Thank you out there for having such great blogs and being such great friends! You deserve this! Feel free to award people who have already been awarded…"

I appreciate all the nice blog awards that have been given to me in the last year, unfortunately I haven't made time to keep up with them.  I keep telling myself I am going to try to post them, but it hasn't happened!  I want to acknowledge the givers as being very special to me and my blogging experience.  I am also going to have to work really hard to find only 10 of you out there who deserve the Excellent Blog Award too.  There are so many that deserve this pat on the back!!

Thanks for thinking of me.  :)

Nancy

OK, so it's after one a.m. and here I sit.  Well, I was trying to fix my template!  I think it's a partial victory!!!  Say "YEAH!" for the unschooling Mama!

I got it fixed for the most part, but if you were to scroll down the sidebar you might find that it goes on, and on, and kind of repeats itself a bit.  *sigh*  I still haven't figured that out yet, BUT I DID figure out quite a bit of it all by myself.  It feels good to know that you actually CAN teach an old dog new tricks!!!

Hey, have you been over to the blog awards yet to do your voting???  I believe the voting is only for this week, so get over there and vote for your favorite blogs!  Thank you kindly for the nomination, what an honor!  I still haven't discovered all the unschooling/eclectic blogs out there (of course not!) but have enjoyed seeing those on the nominee list.  I still have to get back over there and finish up with all the categories!  It is so hard to choose isn't it?

My kids and I had an interesting day here.  Since they are "getting older" I feel that they need a little more of my concentrated efforts.  Unfortunately, most of the time I am unable to concentrate on a whole lot

but we keep pluggin away! 

Let me just give you a quick run down on my kids and what they are doing lately.  Oldest daughter made me an Easter dress!  I might have to hang it up and take a pretty photo for you.  She also made one for herself, a lovely long "puritan" looking dress with an apron.  Next, my oldest son has taken up furniture refurbishing.  He has painted and stenciled and re-upholstered a couple of my dining room chairs and I am very impressed!  Next down, my daughter in the middle is learning calligraphy and doing that quite nicely.  She has been singing quite a bit lately and I pray that I can find an outlet for her singing talent.  Baby boy, "8" still loves to cook and he could keep me busy with that venture 24/7.

My oldest daughter has been doing a word study on "Water" in the Bible and is working her way through the Old Testament right now.  She also was invited to a Passover Seder last week and thoroughly enjoyed it.  I started a impromptu unit study on "the Eye" this week with my younger children and they seem to be enjoying it for short periods of time.  They would rather be pretending to solve mysteries instead.  Hmmmm maybe I could come up with an "eye" mystery for them....any ideas?

We had snow, ice and rain here this week and everything was encased in ice for over 24 hours!  All the plants are intact though.  Even our tomatoes, which were already out in the garden did great!  They were safe and snug in their "wall'o'waters."  Although that information might have been saved for my homestead blog.  :)

Enjoy the rest of your week everyone!

Blessings!

Homeschooling Is Life!

Nancy

p.s. don't forget to vote!!!!

I know I do anyway.  It's hard not to!  Especially with such smart little whipper-snappers all around me.  The other day when my little guy was doing his "math" he asked me if it would help him to understand things like "DNA" and that kind of stuff!  Yup, that's my boy. 

 Then there was my little sweet girl who made up this joke:  "What did the candle say when it was almost burned out?"  "I'm at my WICK'S end!"  They have such a sense of humor.  And some of the puns these kids come up with.....I need to start writing them down!

Well, lets see.....this is going to be one of those rambling blogs....just catching up.  You know, have you seen this wonderful feature on your profile page, called "Interests?"  Well, I have had this crazy blog for a year and a half, and I never filled out the first part 'cuz I thought, "why do they need this twice?"  So I never filled it out.  But LO and BEHOLD, if you put in all your interests, then you can click on them from the front page of your blog, and viola'! You will get a list of all the other bloggers with those things in common with YOU!  Cool, eh?  So, you know what?  My first interest is "antique books."  I love those, have a few I have collected.  And NOBODY on HSB has that same thing on there.  Come on!  Really?  Pshaw!

So then my next one is "Art."  Can you believe it?  104 other folks like art. 

How fun!  Nobody else likes "Garage Sailing" though.  Maybe I should put "Yard Sailing."  Maybe nobody but me "sails" to them.....I dunno.

Happy November everyone!!!!

Nancy

©Nancy K. Baetz Homeschooling Is Life! 2006

Good Morning friends!  I hope your day is a blessing.

I received my weekly sitemeter report today and I had my 10,000th visitor this morning! This dear person spent 27 minutes and 7 seconds on two page views.  How's that for detail?

I thought it was pretty neat, and I am humbled and blessed by my readers.  I wanted to say thank you dear friend from Korea!  I pray that your time here at Homeschooling Is Life was a blessing to you and that the Lord somehow used my thoughts to touch your life today.

Please come back and visit again, and leave me a comment.  :)

Here is a map, courtesy of sitemeter.

Have a wonderful day today, enjoy your families, enjoy yourself!

God is Good,

Nancy

This has been a wonderful "winning" week for me!  First, I was most graciously picked for blogger of the week.  I have NO idea how they pick those, and someone accused me of lining their pockets for it, but alas, I did not.  No bribery here! I was wondering, however how much to bill them for. LOL! 

It has been so fun getting all the responses and meeting so many new blogger friends!  Then, just for being picked, I got a sponsor prize....Marybeth Whalen's book!  I can't wait.

THEN if that wasn't enough, I entered a contest over at Jennie's blog  with this entry (click here) and I won that too!  I can't wait to get my "Clean and Flip" book!  By the way, have you read her blog??  She is the most creative Mom you can imagine.  Her comics are the GREATEST!!! They are seriously the most funny things on earth!!!

I was showing my daughter the winning blog entry I wrote and she said "No wonder you won!  You wrote it at 1:41 A.M!!"  And I say to that, "you just never know when the muse is going to hit."  LOL

Speaking of contests etc., I just have to say that I have entered EVERY berry-picking contest over at Jen's blog and never won a thing.  Zip, Nada, Zilch.  Not even a homeschoolblogger T-Shirt, ahem, which by the way has my name on it. I want a shirt.

 But this has been a Winning Week, and I won't turn it into a Whining Week.  So to that I say, "Nanny-nanny-boo-boo" I guess I will just have to buy my very own! 

 So there.  

  And speaking of contests, be sure to leave a comment over at Lorrie's blog and get a chance to win a great book by homeschooler John Notgrass.

So anyway, Thank you all for this great week (it isn't over yet!) and for the fun I have had blogging and enjoying the comments. Umm....Deja-vu.  Didn't I just say that???  Oh Gee.  Sorry, I guess I am just giddy from all the attention.  (God is so good to me.)

And if you are wondering why I am not blogging about unschooling today.....well, if you need your uschooling blog fix, go to Julie's blog and find out all about balance in the unschooling home AND read one of the best blogs I have ever read on the subject!

Be sure to check out the link to her son's blog, and read about him tagging the master blogger, Hugh Hewitt!  Julie and I will be at the CHEC conference this coming weekend and plan to blog while we are there.  I guess it's all the rage now, and we want to be in on it too!  I can't wait to meet the Somervilles who will both be speaking, and Teri Maxwell and Zan Tyler are going to be there among many other homeschooling vanguards!! 

OK, enough of my name dropping.  I am going to take a nap now.  :)We are REALLY tired today, we got up at 5-ish to go to Country Roots Farm where we are doing a work share.  It is an organic farm that is about 47 miles south of us and we are doing a lot of hard work in the intense heat.....but it is worth it!  Tomorrow we get our first "share" of the produce that is ready.  We can't wait! 

 I *promise* to post some photos.

Blessings!

Homeschooling Is Life,

Nancy