We've had a bit of a delay in starting school this fall.  We had planned to start two weeks ago, but due to a few things beyond my control, we had to put it off until this week.  What was such a big deal that it was out of my control?  This right here:

We made the decision in mid-June to put our house on the market.  With all the renovations that needed to be done before we could even put a sign in the yard, we were pretty much busy non-stop through July and the first weeks of August.  The original "to-do" list was about 5 pages long, including things such as:

• paint (every... single... room...)
• paint all doors and trim.
• refinish kitchen and bathroom cabinets.
• regrout and caulk around tub/shower.
• install tile backsplash in kitchen.
• weather proof back porch.
• put fence back up (that we took down 5 years ago when we added on).
• replace bathroom vanity lights.
• install under cabinet lighting in kitchen.
• scrub gutters and downspouts.
• refresh landscaping.

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What it turned in to was much more.  Little projects turned into big projects, like when paint didn't match the original wall color, so instead of touch-up painting... we had to paint the entire wall.  While painting the entire wall, we found a moldy spot under the air conditioning unit.  So, we had to cut the drywall out, repair the leak in the a/c unit, then replace the drywall... patch, and repaint.  It seemed that so many of our "little jobs" turned out that way!  So, a two week project turned into an almost two month project. 

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Last weekend, we made it official and put the sign in the yard.  So did we start school right away?  Nope.  We went to basketball camp.  Our homeschool group hosted a basketball camp and my two younger ones wanted to go.  So, we postponed school for a few more days and went to play some ball!  (And of course, they loved it!) 

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Now, the house is finished; basketball camp is over; and tomorrow - we start school!  Can't wait!

Yesterday was a gorgeous day here in Arkansas and my 3 children spent the afternoon playing outside with their cousins who are out on spring break this week.  The two little boys were adequately dirty, which is always a good indication that lots of fun was had. 

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Last night, I allowed the kids to eat their dinner in the living room while watching a movie.  I was in the kitchen cleaning up when my youngest came in with a rather disgusted look on his face.  He said, "How do worms eat that stuff?"  I had no idea what he was talking about, until he showed me his hands.  I had neglected to tell him to "wash up" before dinner, and he still had dirt caked on his hands from playing outside.  Evidently, he managed to get some of it in his mouth for a little taste!  Ick! 

Okay, I got tired of messing with PhotoBucket,

so I'm just posting these pics the way they are.

Sorry if it shows up all wonky for ya. 

We really love Christmas at our house.

We always get a real tree; usually from a tree farm,

but this year we went the old-fashioned route.

Last weekend was really mild, weather-wise,

so we bundled up and went out to my

brother-in-law's farm.  We spent some time walking through

the woods, and finally found the "perfect" tree.

Okay, so it's not really quite "perfect",

but it is pretty.  And, well, the fact that it was FREE

certainly made it even more beautiful.

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Hoping to have time to blog this week.  In the meantime, here is a pic from yesterday. 

Guess what we were doing? 

I have pics of the boys, too, but Photobucket is being contrary at the moment and will not let me resize them.  Stay tuned, and I'll post them as I have time this week.

Update: My photo was chosen as a finalist in the contest at 5 Minutes For Mom!!!  Can you believe it?  I am absolutely astonised, amazed, bewildered, aghast, and all those other words that mean really, really surprised and excited and all that jazz!  Would you PLEEEEASE do me a humongous favor and go vote for my pic?  It's at www.5minutesformom.com - look for the SLEEPING ANGEL contest, and scroll down to the last pic, which is #20.  Help me win an amazing, beautiful bedroom set for my precious 9 year old daughter! 

THANK YOU!!!!!!!

When my daughter was still quite small, the movie "Toy Story II" was released.  She fell in love with the character of "Jessie the Cowgirl", and insisted on all things cowgirl from that point on.  For Christmas that year, she got a Jessie doll and a red cowgirl hat.  Somewhere along the line, she acquired these cowprint pants and a pair of cowgirl boots.  Guess what she wanted to wear every single day? 

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The hours that little girl spent with her imagination running as wild as a cowgirl's horse were countless.  And when all the riding and rustling were through, this is where I'd often find her - true to her cowgirl ways... asleep under her worn out hat; having sweet dreams of life on the range, no doubt.  

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My little cowgirl has grown up a bit now.  She's no longer into the cowgirl scene, and now sports many different styles of hats.  She's almost 10 years old!  *sigh*  How can that be?  My little cowgirl is galloping straight into double digits.  I think that she's ready for a bedroom more suited for a young lady.  THIS ONE is gorgeous.  I showed it to her, and she immediately began making plans for what she would place on the shelves on the headboard. 

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What a blessing it would be to win this set!  And thanks to Home and Bedroom Furniture and 5 Minutes For Mom, that just might happen!  5 Minutes For Mom & Home and Bedroom Furniture have teamed up to give away a full bedroom set to the winner of their photo contest.  We would love to win the Lily Rose Set!  It would definitely make my little cowgirl's dreams come true! 

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(This is my entry for the "Sleeping Angel" Contest at 5 Minutes for Mom.)

It's a gloomy, chilly, rainy day today.  I did NOT want to get out of bed this morning!  But, being the prudent homeschooling mama that I am (haha!) I rolled out after hitting the snooze button only once.  I really dread the winter months when it's so dark in the mornings.  That really makes it hard to get out of the warm bed! 

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So what are we up to today?  BigBub has been partly working and partly goofing off.  *frustration*  He likes to take his time and get everything organized the way he wants it, and he often spends too much time organizing and not enough time actually working.  Then by the time he gets around to doing the work, he's either run out of time, or he's "tired".  (And the rainy day only magnifies that "tired" feeling!  I'm feeling it, too!)   It's hard to know where that fine line is between expecting him to be responsible for his own work and getting it done on his own OR standing over him like a drill sergeant.  He's 11. 

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Sis is working on her worksheets, and complaining of being "bored".  LOL.  The 3rd day into it, and she's bored! 

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LilBub is being very good today.  I printed off a fun activity for him to do this morning.  It's an alphabet snake from KizClub.com.  It requires a lot of cutting, so I helped him with that.  But he pretty much did the rest of it by himself.  Now he's excited about having a couple of snakes hanging around.  He can't wait for daddy to get home because he is convinced that the snakes will scare him!  After all that work, I let him chill out with a LeapFrog video. 

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Now we're getting ready to eat lunch.  I'm thinking it's a mac and cheese kind of day!  After lunch - who knows.  I may declare an official "Nap Time" as part of our daily schedule.  LOL.  What kind of day are you having today?

Here are some of the highlights from the month of June 2008...

LilBub-Vader and his cousin who comes to play every Thursday. LilBub also turned FIVE this month.  Can you guess what kind of party he had?  Yep - Star Wars!

 Father's Day - taking breakfast in bed to Daddy.

Fun at Gma and Gpa's Farm... not really, they just have a hayfield in their backyard.

Community Theater production of "Fiddler on the Roof", in which nine members of our family were involved, including dh and our three kids, dh's brother, SIL, & their two kids, and dh's mom.

Look at this gorgeous bird the kids and I found in the back yard today. 

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It's called a "Killdeer".

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We didn't even notice it at first.  We were out collecting rocks to study for our geology unit, when my 11 year old son stopped right in his tracks.  He had gotten a little too close for this mama bird's comfort, and she proceeded to let him know about it.  I could hear her, but it took me awhile to actually see her because she was so well camoflauged with her surroundings.  Upon closer inspection, I saw that she was sitting on 4 brown, speckled eggs - right there in the rocks. 

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I snapped this photo so I could come home and look it up online.  It was really pretty fascinating to read about this very clever bird.

I had a very interesting discussion with my almost 5 year old earlier this week.  He is my youngest of three children, and the first one of my children that I will be homeschooling beginning in Kindergarten, which is a little scary for me!  This is our second year to be homeschooling, so he's gotten used to the idea of his bubby and sissy doing their schoolwork every day.  However, when it comes to his schooling, we have been pretty laid back to this point.  We read a lot of books and go over charts that I have hanging on the wall with letters, numbers, shapes, colors, and the days of the week.  And, up until recently, we just did "preschool" sporadically throughout the day, weaving it in around our other activities. 

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Well, since LilBub has discovered that he likes to play video games, things have changed a little bit.  He wakes up in the mornings ready to play video games.  Every spare moment that we are home, he wants to play video games.  At night when it's time to go to bed, he's sad because he has to leave the video games behind.  And please understand the difference in the child's wanting to play video games, and the amount of time that his parents actually allow him to play them.  There's a big difference!  If we let him play them as much as he would like, we'd never see the child. 

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The problem lately, though, is that he'll ask to play his game, and I'll have to tell him, "Not until after school."  He does not like that answer.  He has decided, in fact, that he does not like school.  Because it keeps him away from his video games.  The child is FOUR. 

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The conversation continues, but I'll have to share it with you next time.  I have to go and unplug the PS2 right now and put the little gamer to bed!  *sigh*

The happier they'll be...

It's been a co~ooold, rainy day today.  Other than a quick trip to the grocery store, we've been at home, bundled up.  After the lessons were done and the mess cleaned up, the kids decided to put together a tent out of blankets and sheets.  After a full day of fussing at each other, it was nice to find them doing something fun together and getting along. 

Whaddya think -

Workin' hard?

Or hardly workin'?

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I obviously have nothing to blog about, as far as school goes.  We are in "survival mode" at the moment, just trying to hang in there while my eldest is going through some health issues.  It's been hard to accomplish much with that going on.  We're hoping to have some answers really soon.

Until then, we'll be doing our Switched on Schoolhouse, reading books, and trying to make the most of it. 

I think I need to start a special section just for cute kid sayings.  My 4 yr. old is a constant source of grins with his sweet sense of humor, and sometimes when he's not even trying to be funny.  Take for example this past Sunday night.  We were at church, and you must understand that our minister is known for his pockets full of Tootsie Rolls which he generously shares with the little ones of the congregation.  Well, it was nearing the end of the service, and as a closing song we sang "My Jesus Knows Just What I Need".  My youngest had been rummaging through his church bag, which usually holds some crayons and coloring book, and maybe a few small cars.  After searching with no success, he finally looked up and said, "Jesus knows just what I need???  Well, I need a tootsie roll!".   And he went back to searching. 

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Ironically, we're starting the KONOS unit of "INQUISITIVENESS" today, and we're talking about "searching" for things.  Guess I already know what is on the little guy's mind!

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We had an absolutely wonderful weekend, enjoying a visit from friends whom we had not seen in two years.  Dh and Craig grew up together in Ohio, and have kept in touch all these years.  Craig was in our wedding 13 years ago.  Dh was in Craig's wedding 2 years ago.  Then, a few months after their wedding, Craig and his new bride moved from the beautiful shores of southern Mississippi all the way up to frigid Alaska.  Since then, Craig has spent time in Iraq (Air Force) and Kimberly, his lovely wife, has had an adorable baby boy.  When Craig found out he would be in Alabama for a training class, he called us up to see if they could come and visit.  We were thrilled with that idea, especially since we would finally get to know Kimberly a bit better and meet that sweet baby boy. 

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We had been anticipating their visit for the past month, and they finally arrived Friday evening just in time for dinner.  To our delight, baby Nathanael didn't hesitate to come right to us and we enjoyed playing and rocking and cuddling with that little guy.  He is such a sweetie!  

We had a lot of fun Saturday.  Kimberly was thrilled to go to the mall, since the shopping selection where they live in Alaska is pretty limited.  We didn't actually buy anything, just walked and looked and talked, talked, talked.  It seemed that we talked nonstop, which was nice.  It was also nice that dh's parents offered to watch the kiddos while we went shopping.  Kimberly noted that she didn't get to get out much by herself, so that was a treat for her.  Dh's parents were more than thrilled to watch the baby, too, of course! 

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Monday morning came all too soon and we had to say our goodbyes.  They headed on up the road to Ohio to visit with Craig's family before flying back to Alaska.  The kids were sad when they woke up and realized that Craig and Kimberly had left.  We just had a laid back day yesterday, getting caught up on rest and laundry.  Today we're back to the old grind, doing school work and all the other every day stuff.  It's always a little hard getting back to the usual routine after having such a nice time with friends.

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(photos: each of my older kids w/Nathanael.)

School started here on Monday, August 13th; at least part of it did!  We're doing the KONOS ONLINE CO-OP again this semester, and that does not kick off until September 4th.  But, in the meantime, it's just too HOT to do anything else, so may as well have school. 

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We got off to a great start.  The morning of the 13th, we got up early and took dh to work.  This was unusual for us because he has to be at work at 7am, and we're usually not up that early.  So, it was a special treat for all of us to get to spend a few minutes with Dad before he went in to work.  Then I took the kids through the BK drive-thru to get breakfast, which they thought was completely cool. 

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At home, I had gift bags waiting for each child, full of new supplies and a few fun things for school.  Here are some shots of them opening their goodies:

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(below: DS being silly, opening his school goodies.)

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(below: DD is more excited about her "High School Musical" stickers than anything else!)

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(below: Here's one of the little guy, who started preschool and is quite thrilled with it!)

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And so far, so good.  We're already relearning some lessons that we should have known really well by now, like how important it is to get up on time and get school underway early in the day.  That's just a hard lesson to learn!  But, all the local schools started back today, too, so that makes it a little easier for the kids, knowing that they aren't the only ones.  And, their little friends aren't knocking on the door all day, being turned away because my kids are already in school.   

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I will say that I am LOVING the new Switched-On-Schoolhouse math and language programs that we decided to use this year.  What a great program!  Sure takes a load off of my plate, to have those two subjects covered, and covered WELL. 

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It seems my youngest has turned into a regular comedian lately, though undoubtedly an unintentional one.  A few posts back, I told about him getting "avregated" with his belt.  Then, a few days ago he had another episode with his belt while trying to get ready for church.  This time, he had accidentally gotten his big brother's belt and was trying to make it work for him.  He came to me with this belt through the loops of his pants, but mostly it was hanging, nearly dragging the floor.  He looked at me with a pitiful look and said, "Mommy, I look REDICLEE-US."  He doesn't have any clue how cute he is when he tries to use such big words and they come out a little funny.  Of course, when I get tickled about it, he tells me very blatantly that it is NOT funny. 

While I'm on the subject of my little cutie-patootie, let me tell you about another funny.  Now, we all know that little kids don't really have any concept of what's appropriate and inappropriate to say in public.   Well, my youngest has a particular knack for picking the worst thing to say at the worst time sometimes.  Take yesterday, for example.  I had to take a prescription into the pharmacy to get filled, and my youngest begged to tag along.  So just he and I went to Wal-Mart, to the pharmacy, and did a little grocery shopping while we waited for the medicine to get filled.  After about 20 minutes, we headed back to pick up the prescription, and found a pretty long line, as well as an interesting looking crowd in the waiting area.  There were these two guys sitting at the end of the row of chairs who had obviously been working very hard that day.  They were really dirty, and one of them had a black, scraggly beard and long, stringy black hair with a red bandana tied around his head.  So, we were standing there, and my guy pipes up with a "Look, Mommy!" as he's pointing excitedly towards the scraggly haired guy in the red bandana.  "It's Captain Jack Sparrow!"  I couldn't bring myself to even look to see if the guy heard him.  I just shhshed my little guy and explained to him that he shouldn't point at people, and then prayed that no one noticed!

We got home from church tonight a little later than usual, since we stopped to get ice cream and socialize afterwards.  As soon as we got home, the kids were told to hurry and get ready for bed. 

My youngest is 4 years old.  He is going through the whole “do it myself” phase, so I’ve been letting him change his own clothes and do it on his own as much as possible.  Tonight he was genuinely trying to comply with the order to “get ready for bed”, but he was having a hard time unfastening his belt (since that’s something he doesn’t always wear).  He came in to where I was and said in a very frustrated voice,

“I am so AVREGATED!” 

It took a few times of him repeating himself for me to catch on to what he was talking about.  Thankfully his big brother was there and understood what the problem was and showed him how to undo his belt.  It was too cute!

Here's my little guy, showing his "avregated" face:

Our sleeping arrangements are, well... they're kinda weird. 

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See, when we first moved into this house, it had 3 bedrooms.  That was fine, since it was dh and me and our two kids.  And then came #3.  The 2 kids' bedrooms were really small, so we kept the baby's crib in the master bedroom for almost the entire first year of his life.  We realized that was only a short-term solution and tried putting our house on the market so we could find something a little bigger.  The real-estate market at that point was very slow, and the house just wasn't going to sell.  So, the only other option was to add on to the back of the house.  We added on a big family room and a 4th bedroom.  My oldest was about 7 years old at the time and was excited to be getting a new bedroom.  The only problem was that it was in the back of the house, separated from the other three bedrooms.  He didn't seem to mind too much, so we didn't make a big deal of it. 

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Fast forward to 2007, and we have a 10 year old with separation anxiety at night.  He's not the only one, either.  I don't know if it's because our youngest shared our bedroom for so long or what, but getting him to sleep in his room by himself has been a definite challenge.  One thing that has helped is that DD (age 8) doesn't like to sleep alone, either, so she offered awhile back to sleep with her little brother in his bed, or he could sleep with her in her bed.  Then, whichever bed they weren't occupying could be used by the big brother, so he could sleep in the front of the house with everyone else.  (Yes, it's really, really weird.  But it works.  And when you value sleep, you sometimes just find something that works and go with it.) It works .....Except when sister is away for the night, like she was last night since she spent the night with her grandparents.  So, little brother realized as bedtime drew near last night that his snuggle-buddy was gone.  So, he asked big brother to sleep with him! 

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Big brother is NOT a snuggler.  Never has been, even as a baby.  He was never the kind of kid that could do the "family-bed" thing because he is just too rowdy in his sleep.  So, he compromised and made a pallat in the floor of little brother's room.  He even offered to read a bedtime story to little brother, and before the story was over, little bro was out like a light.  They did great together. 

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So tonight when it came time for bed, little brother went to his bed, big brother went to the pallat in the floor again, and sister came in and climbed in bed with little brother.  It was so cute.  Big brother even read another bedtime story.  After tucking them all in for the night, I was in my bedroom across the hall folding some laundry.  First I heard big brother say, "Goodnight (sister), goodnight (brother)".  Then, two littler voices replied, "Good Night (brother)!".  They all exchanged "sweet dreams" wishes.  I couldn't resist adding my own, "Good night, John Boy!" 

To which big brother replied, "Good night, Winfred!", and of course, the other two had to echo, "Good night, Winfred!"  And they all giggled.  Where they got the name "Winfred" - I have no idea.  But, they had no clue who "John Boy" was and why in the world I would utter such a phrase, so they made up an equally silly name to call me in return.  I'll have to introduce them to "The Walton's" sometime, huh? 

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My kids... they can be so sweet. 

I've been very frustrated with them today because of all the squabbling that they've been doing.  I've had long talks with the older two about how they should be treating each other. 

It was really heartwarming to see them all want to sleep in the same room tonight.  :)

No, it's not what you're thinking.

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It's STREP.  Ugh.  After 2 hours in the waiting room at the doctor's office, we finally get called back.  My little guy was shaking so terribly from his fever at that point that he could hardly walk.  The doctor said it was definitely strep and gave us prescriptions to get filled.  Since dd, dh, and I have been suffering scratchy throats and headaches as well, we ended up with a whole family-pack of meds.  Too bad we didn't get a discount.  I spent $75 at the pharmacy!  And that was only the CO-PAYs.  Yet another reason to hate being sick.

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Please say prayers for speedy recovery for all of us!