Yesterday, the UPS man came.  At our house, it is always like Christmas when he comes because most of the time, he is bringing TOYS! One of the benefits of being a Discovery Toys Rep!  LOL My kids LOVE having a toy mommy!

Anyway, he brought in 9 boxes! In 3 of those boxes were my kids Doodle Desks.  What is a Doodle Desk? It is this really sturdy cardboard desk that has pictures for the kids to color and places to add photos....kind of like a scrapbook, only a desk! Here is the description from Discovery Toys:

Looks like a desk, functions like a desk. Yet it’s SO much more! And fun! It’s a unique 3-D canvas upon which kids can draw, color, write …even paste things like a scrapbook! Children can showcase their creative skills and personal life stories with 4 “favorite” themed panels – People, Places, Things & Memories. As they select favorites to feature, they refine memory skills and learn how to make important choices. In the process, they explore and express their inner thoughts and feelings, likes and dislikes, achievements and challenges – critical for emotional and social development. Easy to assemble corrugate desk measures 23 ”h x 27 ”l x 19 ”w. Assembled stool measures 12 ”h x 13”l x 13”w. (58cm x 69cm x 48cm, 30cm x 32cm x 33cm) From 4 years and Up

When I first saw this at our Convention this year, I didn't think my kids would want them....but they did.  After they came in yesterday, all 3 of them spent the entire afternoon working on coloring in the pre-drawn designs and talking about what pictures they were going to add to it! So, we now have 3 Doodle Desks!  Here are the pictures of my children decorating their personal desks!

My daughter will be 13 next month and she loves it!

This son is 10.

And this one is 7.

Now they will have a very cool way to display their artwork and things that they do this school year!

See....my house really is a PLAY To Learn Home!  Have a playful day everyone!

Well, after only starting school 5 weeks ago, we decided to go ahead and take a fall break along with the public school kids.  We were not going to but since I offered to keep the little girl that we used to watch, we decided to take a week off from school and get some other things done. So...here we are!  On Fall Break!

I am not sure how much of a break I will get this week. 

Today I am cleaning out my office.....again! I can't seem to keep it organized.

Tonight is my Discovery Toys TEAM meeting and since I am the TEAM Leader....I kinda have to be there! LOL

Tomorrow I will finish some things around the house.  The kids want to sell some of their things on Ebay so I guess I get to help them do that.

Wednesday, I get to go have coffee with a new homeschool mom in our area!  I love doing that! 

Thursday I get to go set up my Discovery Toys booth at the Wee Ones Re-Runs Consignment Sale in Covington and then will be there on Friday meeting people!

 Friday night will be fun.  The homeschool families from our church, Raleigh Assembly of God, are coming over for a bonfire!  We have about 20 families in the church that homeschool!

Why is it that when we have a "break", we end up doing more than normal? LOL

Have a great week!

Whew!  The actual process of getting the playroom (now school room) was not that hard or take very long.  It didn't even take long to take pictures.  What has taken so long is to get me to sit down long enough to upload them!

Here are the before pics:

Here is my youngest painting.  Yes, I actually let the kids help! LOL

This is one of my youngest and oldest painting.  The middle child was away at camp and was disappointed that he didn't get to help.

My hubby built me a shelf for our books and left a space underneath for the kids to sit and read.  We put an under cabinet light under it too.

Since my hubby built a shelf for the books, I decided to use 2 of my existing shelves for the toys and games.

Here is the wall that has my dry erase board, timeline, solar system poster and multiplication poster.  The book shelf next to this area has all of our school books for this year.

Here is our Music area.

I still have more to share but we have to run to Office Depot to have some more lesson plan books printed and bound.  I will tell you about those later! 

Lately I have been working on organizing my office and school room / playroom for the upcoming school year and have been trying to decide how to organize all of the stuff that we use.  Well, I have found the Homeschool Queen of Organizing!  Betsy Stout sent a link out to pictures of her school room and I have been studying it all week!  It is EXACLTY what I am trying to do but I just couldn't figure out how to do it.  Here is a link to her pictures http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/NotebookingNook/353757/. Go check it out!

I will be organized and ready to roll when we start school.  Thanks Betsy!

Well, I am back.....again!  LOL  I actually have popped in frequently but had forgotten my password and never took the time to try to retrieve it until yesterday.  I emailed HSB Support and they helped me immediately!  THANKS Jodi!

Anyway, things are still going well here.  We are taking a mini summer break right now.  The two older children will be going to church camp on July 9th.  I was supposed to go with them but we had too many adults from our church signed up to go....what a wild problem to have, too many volunteers!  LOL  Imagine that.

I will be heading to California on July 19th for the Discovery Toys National Convention and am SO excited about it.  We have 40 new products that will be coming out in the fall and I will get to see them at the "Toy Fair" that Discovery Toys does for us.

We will finish out the summer doing math and finishing up some things that need to be done but will still be having fun too!  We are enjoying "Terrific Tuesdays" at our church where the kids get to go do fun things.  We have had skating and children's museum so far.  Next week is Chuck E. Cheese!  YAY!! 

That is all for now.  I will post again soon.....if I remember my password that is! LOL

I have quite a bit of catching up to do!  We have been pretty busy around here and I have not had a chance to blog. 

Let's see.... in November, the new little baby that I am keeping was born.  She is such a cutie and is really a good baby.  It is a joy to have her around.  Since I can't have anymore children, I will just borrow others :)

I stayed busy in November and December with Discovery Toys.  My children got a lot of Discovery Toys this year!  :) So many of our products are great learning tools that I can use in our homeschool.

We have really gotten into Ancient Greece and have a lot of fun with it.  We tried to make a paper mache' apple to have a keepsake for Zeus' Golden Apple but it didn't turn out very well so we just painted a fake apple and wrote "To The Most Beautiful"  on it.  My kids will always remember that story! 

Things slowed down in January a little bit.  My uncle Don passed away on Jan 28th after a long battle with cancer.  He will be greatly missed but we know that he is in a much better place and is not in pain anymore!  Praise God!

We are preparing for our Valentine's Party with the homeschoolers at our church.  I love being a part of a church that has so many homeschoolers!  It is such a blessing to have others people that believe in the same things as you do and be able to get together for homeschool activities. 

I will TRY to come on frequently and update....we shall see :)

I had SO much fun today!  I had the opportunity to speak to the new moms support group at one of the hospitals in our area.  There were about 5 of them there and they all had their babies ranging in age from 7 weeks to 7 months.  I got a party booked and everyone was interested in Discovery Toys in one way.  This is one reason why I love my job!  I get to teach new mommies about these wonderful products and see the joy in their faces. 

Have a PLAYFUL day!

On the way to church this morning, I started reading the latest edition of The Old Schoolhouse Magazine.  Fabulous as always...anyway, I was so excited to see the article about Leanne Ely and her methods of helping families eat healthier meals together.  I have been a Menu Mailer subscriber for almost 2 years.  I have always been a good cook but it wasn't always healthy....too much fat, preservatives, sugar....etc. Now, we cook very healthy meals and are feeling GREAT!  My cholesterol is AWESOME!

My children aren't crazy about every meal that I cook from the menu mailer reipes but how many kids DO like everything their mom cooks??  I was amazed though at some of the things they did eat.  They actually like the recipes with salmon!  If you have not checked out www.savingdinner.com then do it today!  You can use a sample menu for a week and see how it works. 

Well, we have started school again but are slowly getting back into it.  We actually started last Monday (July 31) and the kids are really doing well.  The older 2 are keeping up with their lessons in their own planners (Homeschool Planners) and the youngest is doing it with my help.

Here is what we are learning this year:

Ancient History

Zoology, Human Body and Botany

Latin

English

Reading

Math

Art -Drawing with Children

Music Appreciation - Color the Classics

It is going to be a great year.  I look forward to all of the wonderful things that I get to learn and do with my children! 

The gentleman across the highway from us came over this evening and asked my DH if we had an orange cat. William said yes and the man said that he had found one this afternoon in the highway. It was our sweet Sunny. He has never gone near that street before but last week we saw him chasing chipmunks in the yard so maybe he was chasing one of them today. My children are all sad and will miss "Sunny Bunny" very much.

My father in law rescued him from the woods in MS where someone had dropped him off. He was so little that he fit in the palm of your hand. We took him to the vet and had all of his vaccinations done and when he was old enough, had him "noodled" (that is what my kids called it! LOL). At night, he slept on the top bunk of my 6 yr old DS. He was just the sweetest kitty and was so pretty. We are gonna miss you Sunny!

One of my old pastors used to tell a story about his son breaking a window in their new house.  He taught us to remember that things can be repaired or replaced but people can not be.  Well, today, my husband was mowing the yard and a rock flew from the mower and broke the back windshield of my van.  Instead of getting angry, I was thankful for the fact that it was the windshield and not my 9 yr old son that was standing near the van when it got hit.  God taught me an important lesson today.  Stop worrying about little things and keep my eyes on Him.

Here are the pictures of the damage:

I went to see The Spa Girls (TM) today for a Women's Retreat with our church.  I had the BEST time!  If you need to learn Spiritual, Practical and Amusing Ways to live the Godly life, you MUST get to one of their presentations.  Here is their web site http://www.thespagirls.net. Check out their calendar and find out if they are going to be in your area.  If they are....GO!!!

Wow....I guess I took a LOA!  I didn't realize that it had been so long since I had been here.  Time flies when you are...busy!

We have been going going going since we stopped daycare.  Actually, one of the daycare kids is back.  She needed us and so we only keep her now.  She is just part of the family I guess. 

We plan on starting back to school full force soon.  We have not really taken a break but have slowed down.  I have got to get the kids back on track.  Next year, we will be a LOT more structured than we have been.

I guess that is all I can talk about right now.  I will try to post again soon :)

I did get excused from Jury Duty.  I told the judge that I homeschool my children and that the TN law requires I teach them for 180 each year and since the umbrella school that I am registered with needs their grades to be reported by June 15th then I really needed to finish my teaching for the year.  He excused me :)

We have achievement testing next week.  It isn't required but I just wanted to do it and see how we are doing compared to the national average.  I think all of my children will do well.

We should be done with school by May 5th and will start getting down and dirty in the garden.  The kids are going to work the land this summer and try to sell some of their vegetables to make some money.  They will also have fresh eggs for sale.  It will be a fun summer!! I will be working on getting our school schedule for next year ready and planning out what we will be doing. 

I am off to get some floors mopped now.  We have some friends coming over tonight and I have some errands to do this afternoon so I better get busy.

Have a FUN day!

It is FINISHED!  I am OUT of the daycare business!  YAY me!  I sold all of the daycare supplies last weekend and am going to working on making that room and great Game Room for my family. 

I have been doing SO WELL with my Discovery Toys business!  I am still looking for new team members nationwide so keep your eyes and ears open.  If you know of anyone looking to make some extra money, I can help them! 

Starting April 10, I get to report for Jury Duty!  YAY....or not.  I have 3 children that I have to find childcare for.  Even though my daughter is a Red Cross Certified Babysitter, she is only 11 and I don't feel comfortable leaving her in charge of her brothers all day. I need to find someone to stay with them.  That could get costly!  Have you ever known anyone to get out of jury duty as a homeschool mom?  Let me know!!

Everything is going well.  We are kinda taking it easy right now and only working on Math and English this week.  We will start back on the other things next week. 

Keep praying for my family.  Every prayer helps!

Things will be winding down soon so I will have more opportunities to pop in here and post.  I still have 4 day care kids but one of them will be leaving me this Friday and another one next Friday.  One of them only comes in the afternoons from 3-5:30 but I am going to let her mom know that she needs to find someone else to start on the 20th because I am going to go do some running around and don't want to have to be home by 3 every day. 

I think I am going to take my kids for their yearly eye exams and for their 6 mo dental visits soon.  It is time for all of that stuff :)

I appreciate all of the kind remarks about my Discovery Toys business.  I am working on getting back up to where I was before I quit a few years ago.  If you know of anyone that has been thinking about working from home, please send them my link.  I would love to show them how they can make money!

So long for now.  I will try to post again soon.

I am still around. 

What have I been doing?  Well, taking care of kids, homeschooling, working my Discovery Toys business.... a whole bunch of stuff! LOL

I have missed hearing from everyone so will try to find some time today to hop around and leave some Valentine's Day messages! 

I have decided to close my childcare business!  I think that I need to get back to being MY kids mom again!  Our last official day is July 28 but we have many days off in the mean time. 

I would love for you to help me with my new business adventure by sharing my web site with your friends...  Please visit www.christiejarvis.com and pass it on!

We are looking forward to getting involved with the homeschool co op, bowling and many more things now that our days will be free!  I can't wait!

Oh bad bad me!  I have neglected my poor blog for almost a month!  I ought to be ashamed of myself. 

The last you heard, my computer had died....well, it was fixed that next day but where have I been??  I have no idea!  We took a little break from school and I guess I just went wild !!

We have been back in action for a week now and it is going well.  The preschoolers have been learning about snow and cold weather :)  Kinda hard to make them understand that when it is 57 here! We need some snow! The older ones finished their book (The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) and so we went to see the movie yesterday.  It was good.  I can not wait to get started on the next book!!

We need to get busy on our History.  We have plans to make a monkey doll this week as an activity to go along with our history.  That should be fun :)

I start my classes back in a week.  I can't say that I am excited!  More to add to my schedule. 

This weekend, my dear husband and I are going to Nashville with NO KIDS!  WOW.  My sister is keeping the older one and my MIL is keeping the boys.  We will only be gone Fri night and will be home sometime Sat evening.

I will see you later!  Hopefully, it will not take a month this time :)