Baby Dillon did get transfered to the bigger hosptal but now he's doing much better. Thank you to everyone who prayed.  He will hopefully be able to come home in 3 to 5 days.  Thank you, Jesus! 

I haven't been able to post as often because my hubby has been fixing up our computers.  He's been working hard to get them working well for the start of our school year. 

My 20 yo cousin  just had her first baby yesterday.  One hour after he was born he stopped breathing and they've had him on machines and been working with him since. They said if he wasn't better by noon today they were going to fly him to a larger hospital.  I haven't heard yet what they decided to do.  Please pray for baby Dillon.

My cousin's name is Fawn.  Her husband has been serving in Iraq and he is only here for another week, then he goes back.  She was raised in a Christian home, but I don't know how strong her faith is.  Please pray for her that she will draw close to God. Thank you so much. I'll post an update when I hear.

The last few days we've had some wonderful family times. The weather has been georgous!  It's been  warm with a nice breeze.  My hubby took the kids to the park one morning and later that day we enjoyed the outdoors at our home.  Yesterday,  I took the kids for a long  nature walk down a trail near our house and I let the kids take their time looking at the trees, insects, flowers and just being in God's creation. 

We start school in two weeks and  I've come up with a daily schedule. I hope to post it here soon.  My hubby says it's the best "beginning of the year schedule" I've come up with yet.  I'm looking forward to starting school. I have mostly everything we need, but  I still have a few books to order the first of Sept. 

Less of Me~More of Him is hosting a Homeschool Open House. Last I checked, over 250 moms posted about their homeschools.  Here is a little about our little about us. 

 This is our 11^th year home educating our kids. We have 5 children and they’ve all always been homeschooled.  I do the majority of the teaching, but my husband is my biggest support.  When things aren’t going smoothly he gives me great ideas and lets me talk things out.  My husband helps the kids with computer programming, 3d modeling, music, and just helping them with their homework if they are stuck on something..  He also shares with them his passion and knowledge of science.  

 When we started out, I ordered a complete first grade curriculum.  The workbooks looked so colorful and fun!  I soon found out that because  it was made for a school  there was just way too much busy work. Plus my son read all the readers for the year in the first week!   In the early days (when I only had 3 kids and 2 were school age) I did more unit studies and child directed learning. 

 About 7 years ago I first read the Charlotte Mason companion  by Karen Andreola.  It’s my favorite homeschooling book by far :)  Since then I’ve incorporated lots of the ideas from that book.  We’ve mostly chosen “living books” over  textbooks, and we’ve done lots of copywork, dictation, personal spelling lists, and narration – where the child tells back what they’ve read or what you’ve read aloud to them. 

 For math we’ve pretty much stayed with Math-U-See.  It’s very hands-on even in the upper grades, and the kids watch a video segment at the beginning of a new lesson, then for the rest of the week they do workbook pages on the new concept.  There is review each week on what they’ve learned previously.  

 We all love games and we’ve used many in our homeschool throughout the years.  We’ve used store-bought and homemade games.  Educational computer programs and websites are also a great resource. 

 Each year has been different.  My older 2 boys are now very independent with their learning.  My oldest does most of his subjects on the computer, using a curriculum called Switched on Schoolhouse.  It’s great because it’s grades almost everything except for essay type questions.  But it’s not for every student, my almost 14 has never had any interest in using it.  Having a toddler can be challenging, but for years now I’ve had the kids rotate spending time one on one with their younger siblings.  This has been an incredible blessing to me and for my children.  During that time I can focus on teaching the other kids.  Naptime is usually when I read aloud to the kids. 

 We’ve had pretty much the same routine over the years.  I aim to start school by 9:00 am. We do our morning chores and bible reading before that.  When the kids were young we usually finished by noon. Now that we have more kids and 2 high school students we finish school around 2:00 pm.  But if we get interrupted during the day, or we have different activities to go to like music lessons, or our weekly homeschool group, we may do science or history in the evening. 

I have spend the last 2 days doing spring cleaning and organizing (I didn't get arround to it in the spring :) .  I can't  seem to stop!  I'm the type of person who can let things go for a while and clutter will start taking over, but once I'm in the cleaning mode I usually keep going untill everything is shiny clean and back in order. 

It's amazing how many toys you can accumulate when you have 5 kids!  It doesn't help that at our dump you have to walk through the " still good shed"  to throw out your trash.  I always seem to find at least one little "goodie".  This past week I found  a stack of educational computer CD's-ones that the kids really like-and five of the "A Series of unfortunate Events" books in excellent condition.

Yesterday, Sophie and I  made some more beaded jewelry. It was very relaxing. Boys are so great, but I'm also enjoying having a girl.   When I had bought Sophie some beads at wal-mart once, while we were waiting in line, she told the person behind us  that "mommy and I are going to do girlie things together" it was really cute. 

Our last butterflies came out and we did get a time-lapse!  It came out awesome!  My hubby is  trying to convert it into a JIF animation so I can post it here.  Today we let all the butterflies go free.

We went to church this morning.  The worship was great and it was the best message I've heard in a while.  After church we watched a movie, then the kids help me organize the toys that were getting scattered all over the house. 

Charles had gone camping this week-end, so he met us at a park near where Andrew was practicing for his play.  Then we just hung out at the park, something we've been doing often because Andrew has been in 3 plays this summer!  There was another little girl there named Sophie who was born the same month as my daughter.  Sophie has become a very popular name these days, I hear it every where!

This morning I knew that one of the butterflies was ready to break out of it's  pupa.  We got the camera ready, but unfortunetly, it wasn't charged and the battery power ran out so we didn't get a time-lapse.  But the kids and I did get to watch the butterfly come out. Then an hour latter we had 2 more butterflies.  So we now have a total of 5. We have two more chrysalises left, so hopefully, we'll still get a time-lapse. 

I can breath a sigh of relief, all this year's school evaluations are done!  I worked all week-end to finish the last 3 portfolios.  I met with a teacher this morning at the private school we go through.  We've had the kids evaluations done throught this school for the last 10 years.  My oldest son only needs to take one class at the school sometime before he graduates and he'll get a diploma through the school. 

The portfolios consist of a yearly summary of what the kids covered in each subject and what grades they got.  For the younger years I don't give grades, I just write about what they used for curriculum and what they learned in each subject.  I list the books they've read for the year, and include samplings of their work.  I also like to put in scrapbook type pages with pictures of field trips, friends, and projects. 

My son's friend went on vacation and asked us to take care of their chrysalises.  There are 7 of them and they should turn into Monarch butterflies sometime very soon. We've been watching them everyday and we hope to get a time-laps of a butterfly emerging.  Here are some pics:

This is a great site for learning about Monarch butterflies.  http://www.monarchbutterflyusa.com/MBUSA.htm