How is it done?  Homeschooling with toddlers running around, that is.  Our 2 year old is quite the handful and there are days when I think that we should enroll him into the circus.  He has the humor of my husband ten fold.  I am shocked daily by his ability to understand humor and to make everyone around him laugh.  He also has the ability to destroy anything in his path.  I was talking with my mother yesterday telling her all of the things he managed to do in 1 day and she insisted that I write it all down.  She said you know one day when he is a famous comedian and reporters ask you if he was that funny as a child you can bring out this huge book full of this stuff. 

I have to admit, that isn't such a bad idea.  Maybe I will have to start a seperate blog of just things Max has done during the day.

I want to thank everyone who has left comments.  I was so excited to see that I had a bunch of comments the other day.  I didn't have my account set to notify me of comments so I didn't even know I had them.  (Don't worry I fixed it and now I know.)  So let me see if I can answer some comments and questions...

learningeveryday :  We are absolutely LOVING Homer Price.  The kids have been begging me to please just read a little more... Every day!!  We are going to finish it up today and they are so sad that it is the end, but that means we get to start another great book.

MommylovesRJ : LOL, Yes I suppose I was Thrice Blessed x10.  Too Funny.  Also yep I'm another Illinoisian and SOOOOO ready for fall to get here.  Sing with me Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love you, tomorrow it's only a day aaaaaaawwwwwwwaaaaaaaayyyyyyyy.  I can't wait for those 60's as high to get here.

Seeker : Making the butter and buttermilk took less then 20 minutes.  I was actually shocked at how quickly it went.  We actually shook it and took turns but of course I ended up doing most of the shaking.

learningeveryday:  You lived on a dairy farm?  Oh I am so jealous!!  I am going to make my way over to your blog later today (after all the chores are done) and read!  Thank you for asking our house is SO incredible.  I have a school room (or area) and a sewing room (which is also the guest room.)  I will post an update about it later.  I am so glad that I am not the only one to admit to bad spelling.

SuzyScribbles : But of course I would post your icon.  I am really excited about your contest.  I have a little girl that loves to read and loves horses so I thought I would give it a try.  I mentioned to my daughter a little about your books and she is begging me to buy them for her for Christmas...  So I have some books to buy it sounds like.  Also we SOO love Sonlight.  We are on Core 1 right now but I am really excited about getting to Core 3, even if it is 2 years away.  I will let you know if I have any questions what so ever.  BTW  We are also using Saxon with Emily (or oldest daughter.)  We tried Horizons with her but it just didn't work for her.

ltjewel : Thank you very much.  I must say God really blessed us.  Our move has been the best thing for us.

Wow that was a lot.  I have more to say but... I still have other things that need to get done today so I will try to remember to post them later.

Thank you to ThriceBlessed who informed me that my last post reposted itself 30 times.  That was fun.  Oh well, it was very easy to fix.

We are just starting our 5th week and things are calming down and becoming more of a routine.  Routines tend to work so much better in this house.  Emily just can't handle tWe have yet to do the lapbook on Charlotte's Web which is why you haven't seen the pictures yet.   Hopefully we will get it done some time this week and I can post some pictures of it.  We are starting Homer Price this week and I am excited to be moving on to the next book.  The girls don't like the name of the book but they sure do love the picture on the front the boy eating a donut that is still hot.  We may have to make a trip to Krispy Kreme for this book, even though the closest one is about an hour away. 

We have been reading Charlotte's Web as part of our Core 1 from Sonlight and we have really been enjoying it.  Friday we read the part where Mrs. Zuckerman is giving Wilbur a buttermilk bath.  Well we started talking about what buttermilk was and how it was made.  The girls thought that was just the coolest thing ever and begged me to let them make some.  Well since I don't keep heavy whipping cream on hand I said that we would try to get some over the weekend.  Well I remember to get the cream and today after our other school work was done we got to make buttermilk and butter.  It was the coolest thing I have seen yet this year.  So here are the results of making our buttermilk...

Suzy's Scribbles is having a contest where she is giving away a copy of her new book.  All you have to do is guess correctly how many horses are in the jar.  Check it out.

Okay I have to start out with how excited I am!!  Sonight has come out with a Core A for ages 2 - 4!  The books look wonderful and I can't wait to get it for Max next year.

On another note, I don't think I mentioned that I changed Emily's math program.  We tried several different programs last year and I finally decided that Horizon was the best program for my girls.  It moves at a quicker pace, it's colorful and fun.  Through the summer I have been continplating if this was the right choice for Emily or not.  We started with Saxon last year and she really loved it but it just seemed to move to slowly for her.  She had been begging me to go back to Saxon and after careful consideration I agreed. 

Emily tends to be over stimulated very easily and Horizons has a very stimulating design.  The pages are busy which can look over whelming.  Also Emily does seem to hold onto facts better when she repeat them and when she can see a pattern.  So far it is working really well for her and she is a much happier camper (at least about math.)

I remember vividly as a child being lined up in class for our class spelling bee.  Every time we did this I was out very quickly.  I have never been able to spell very well at all.  I have been known to actually call my husband at work and ask him how to spell a word because I can't get spell check to give me the correct spelling.

It seems that my poor Emily has inherited my atrocious spelling.  I am at a loss as to what I should do with her.  So far this year I am using Sonlight's language arts which includes 10 spelling words a week and a spelling rule.  Her spelling words correlate with her phonics book which is nice but I don't know if there is a better way to get the correct spelling lodged into her brain.  If you have any good ideas feel free to leave me a comment.

Monday : Meatloaf and greenbeans with red potato mix

Tuesday: Going out for our Anniversary (2 days early)

Wednesday: Left overs

Thursday: Italian Beef and salad

Friday: Enchiladas and snap peas

Saturday: Home Made Pizza and salad

Sunday: Hamburgers on the grill with corn on the cob

We started our school year the day after labor day.  They both were excited the night before but Emily was much more excited then Eliza.  They wanted to pack up their book bags with all of their books which I let them right before bed time.  Until now they hadn't seen any of their school books for the year as I had them all hidden away in a box that I kept very close track of in our move.  I started handing out all of the workbook type of books like math and phonics and then I gave them their first readers of the year...  First Eliza got a brand new copy of The Beginner's Bible.  Her very own copy.  This was very special because I normally won't buy a second copy of a book just so that each child can have their own copy so normally Eliza gets the hand me down books.  I made an exception for this book.  I want each of them to have their own copy of The Beginner's Bible so that they can have it for their children one day.

Okay back onto the subject at hand...  We got to Emily's first reader and I handed her this little chapter book that wasn't very big and she just about started to cry.  Now this was a big change from my little girl that just couldn't wait to get her hands on her first reader of the year.  I was just baffled.  I looked at her and said Emily why are you so sad?  That little girl looked me dead in the eyes and tearfully said "but Mommy, you said that I was going to read chapter books this year."  I responded with "but hunny this is a chapter book."   to which I hear (and I kid you not...)  "No Mommy this isn't a big chapter book I thought I was going to get to read the big chapter books like what you read.  This book is an easy reader.  I can read the big chapter books, why am I not getting a big chapter book?"  I didn't know what to say, I was dumbfounded.  I couldn't believe that I had a child complaining to me that her book wasn't big enough.  We then perceded to thumb through her readers for the year until she came across one that she felt was big enough for her "The Secret Valley" and then we looked at the IG to see when we get to start it (next week.) and that seemed to help but I must say she has been bugging me on this one ever since.

Enter to win the complete set of
Terrestria Chronicles
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So I know it has been 2 months since I last wrote but a lot has happened in those 7 short weeks.  The last time I wrote we had someone that was going to come look at our house before it was even on the market.  That person did not end up wanting our home which was fine.  We finished a few things on the house and the kids and I went to spend 3 weeks with my parents for a fun vacation.  While we were gone we officially put the house on the market Monday, July 23rd.  I prayed that if God wanted us to move he would make it very clear and that things would happen fairly quickly.  Well, he answered my prayer.  In a slow housing market, our house sold in 4 days for very close to our asking price.  I was shocked because I was sure God didn't want us to move from our wonderful neighbors and the great area that we were living in.  I was very wrong.

Our buyer asked that we close on the 22nd of September which we agreed to, although that was going to be difficult because we would have just been starting school.  We then put an offer on a house that we liked in a near by town and after a little bit of negotiations our offer was accepted as long as we closed on August 24th instead of September 22nd..  It seemed to be going so well, we were even going to be closing earlier which worked out a lot better for school.  Then we had the inspection done on the house we were buying.  OH MY GOODNESS!  That house was falling apart.  We couldn't believe it, I mean we were buying this house from a contractor.  But God just really didn't want us in that house, or really in that town.  The kids and I came back early from our trip 3 weeks before we were now set to move out of our house and we had no where to live.  We spent the very next day driving all over the near by towns looking at about 15 houses.  We decided to go with the house that had been our second choice all along.  As we talked about it the set up was even better for us then the house that we were originally going to buy.  The more we talked, prayed, and thought about it, the more we fell in love with it.  We made an offer and it was accepted and they could be out before the 24th of August.  I knew down deep that God wanted us in that house for some reason and I think we took a side trip with the first house so that we would be closing at a better time for school.

So we moved quickly and started packing and on the 24th of August we moved from our small 2 bedroom 1 bath 1200 SF house (which really only had about 900 liveable SF) that we had been living in for the past 9 year, that we brought each of our children home from the hospital too.  We moved to a house that has 4 bedroom 2 baths and 1800 SF.  It is wonderful!  The town we moved to is quiet and beautiful.  The house is a much better layout for us and we have 2 living spaces so we aren't all on top of each other all the time.  We even have a space for school.  God really knew what he was doing!!!

I will post more about the beginning of our school year sometime in the next week.

Currently we live in a home with about 1200 square feet that originally had 2 bedrooms.  We completely remodeled it last year and added a bedroom upstairs in what was the attic.  We love our home and our neighbors but we have outgrown our home.  We have considered adding on to this house and we have considered moving. 

I am very torn because of our great neighbors who's kids are our kids best friends.  I finally agreed to put our house on the market to just see if it would sell, stating that I was sure that it wouldn't sell.  I also began to pray and my family began to pray that God would put us where he wants us.  If God wants us to move that all of the doors would open up quickly and smoothly.  If God doesn't want us to move then all of the doors would be shut quickly. 

We started looking at homes yesterday and we were suppose to look again tomorrow BUT get this...  There is a Realtor in our realtor's office that has clients looking in our price range.  The Realtor was going to come by and preview the house tomorrow which was fine, she knew that we weren't going to have all of the projects completed yet because we weren't planning on having it listed for another week. 

We got a call from our Realtor saying that this couple want to see our house tomorrow.  TOMORROW!!!  Yikes, on top of all of this Jim got called into work tonight and won't be back until midnight.  I have been running around all evening cleaning and painting spots that have been marked up the last year, spackling the hole in the wall going up stairs where Jim fell into the wall. 

So I am taking a quick break and then I am off to clean some more.  I just have to remember that this is in God's hands, not mine.

My friend Anne and I went to dinner last night and we made a deal!!  I am truly excited about it! 

What you want to know what it is??

Okay well it turns out the we weigh exactly the same amount right now and we both want to be at a weight very close to one another.  So we decided that if we get to a weight about 15 pounds above my goal weight that we would go to Chicago for a weekend of shopping!!  I am so excited, I even told her that I would look into a gym membership at the gym she goes to...

So I am going to add a weight tracker here to help keep track!  Should I mention that I have already lost 20 pounds??  I am very proud of myself and I actually had the first decent picture taken of me earlier this week (the one I have posted here) where you could actually see my jaw line!

Go on over to Sonlight and request a catalog!  You will love it, I know we do!

Okay so I said that I would let you know what we are doing this year, so here it is.

Emily will be doing the following

Sonlight 1, Sonlight LA 2 with grade 3 readers, MCP Phonics C, Horizon Math 2 (2nd book) & 3, Exploring Creation with Botany (continuing experiments with our neighbor),  A Reason for Handwriting transition, Draw Write Now, Prima Latina, Sign Language and hopefully sewing lessons

Eliza will be doing the following

Sonlight 1, Sonlight LA2 with grade 2 readers, Explode the Code 4-6, Horizon Math 1, Exploring Creation with Botany (continuing experiments with our neighbor), A Reason for Handwriting B, Draw Write Now, maybe Prima Latina and hopefully sewing lessons.

Max will be doing the following

Okay seriously he is 2, my goal for him this year is to keep him out of the emergency room, and just to let him have fun.  He is quite the boy and always into something so keeping him uninjured is a big job. 

Mommy will be doing the following

Yes, me!  I have some goals for myself.  I want to take a class at our local community college in Photography to learn more about lighting.  I would really love to start a photography business on the side for weddings and outdoor shoots.  I have done it for a hobby for quite some time and I worked at a studio for a few years just for fun.  I am ready to get serious.  I also want to learn how to quilt.

We are a family of 5 made up of Jim (the daddy), Lola (the mommy), Emily, Eliza, & Max.  Emily our oldest just turned 7 in May, Eliza is 5 1/2 , and Max turned 2 in April. 

We will begin our second year of homeschooling at the beginning of August and I am really excited.  I finally feel confident in what I am doing and I have seen the wonderful results of homeschooling.

Last year was a year of trial and error.  We switched Math curriculums a few times until we found what worked the best for us.  We started with a science program and ended up throwing it out the window and making up our own.  We are very lucky in that our neighbors are also homeschoolers and we had a science day once a week where we switched off... One week my house, the next week her house and we would do an experiment.  We found a handwriting program that we LOVE.  We had bad days and good days and learned from both.  It was a great year.

The reason I am so excited about this next year is I feel very confident in the curriculum choices I made.  I also know the kids are doing great and learning a lot.  We tested Emily's reading at the beginning of last year and found that she was reading at a beginning 1st grade level, when we re tested her at the end of this school year she was reading at a high 3rd grade level.  She is also doing great in math and has already started on some multipication.  Eliza started out the year not reading at all and now is able to read early chapter books.  She is also doing great in her math and has started to add and subtract more then one number at a time.

I will write again soon with a list of our curriculum for this coming year.