When I wrote my last message, I had three other things I wanted to blog about but I'd spent enough time online already and got off. Consequently, those other things I wanted to blog about have evaporated from my mind. Well, maybe it will come back to me. I hope I will blog at least once a week, but maybe even more often. I've got to set a specific time to blog and then maybe I'll get it done more often. Well, enough of that!
What brought me to blog today was two-fold. First, I finally got to watch The Ultimate Gift movie. It was very good! But I have to say that if any of you have ONLY watched the movie, you are really missing some great points of the plot! I will caution you, although Emily is in the book, as a nameless child, she doesn't play nearly as big a role. Now, I totally understand why this is done in the movie but I want you to realize that she has a much smaller part to play in the book, as does her mother. The book is about The Ultimate Gift and how Red goes about getting this over to Jason. You will find that there are many differences but understandably so. Having said that, PLEASE read the book. It has really been thought provoking with my boys and me.
The second thing that prompted me to blog today was that I have just finished reading The Shack. Now I have to admit, when my good friend suggested reading this book and I read what it was about, I was a bit skeptical. But I have to tell you that this was an incredible read!!!!!! After reading several things that I thought were "good points" or things I wanted to remember, I began to mark a few with removable flags to use as my own copywork. I soon realized that there were too many things that were noteworthy. I would skip a few and then there would be another point that really touched me and I'd mark it. So, I finished the book and looked at the flags and found that even though I had limited my "flagging", I still had a dozen flags. I know this is a book that I am going to have to own, much like The Ultimate Gift, so that I can re-read it from time to time and highlight the dickens out of it. .
I will admit that there were a few times that I was quite concerned about some elements and almost stopped reading it. But I have to say, I am so glad that I did not quit reading it. I will be recommending this book to my family to read and have already told the boys that they must read it! I will be recommending it people in my homeschool support group and my online groups, and I have just now recommended it to YOU! It really is worthwhile reading!!!
If you read either of these two books, please email me or post a comment. I'd love to chat with you about them, I'm sooo full having just read them. But don't give out any spoilers in comments so that others will read them too. I'd hate to spoil the fun for others.
For those that take the time to comment, THANK YOU!!! I really appreciate them. It helps me know that people really are reading this blog and that it is worth the effort.
Oh My! I was just told about this movie by a friend. It is called Fireproof and is by the makers of Facing the Giants. It comes out September 26th. I really want to see this. It looks really good! I hope my hubby will take us to see it but if not, I will definitely have to see it in the cheap theater, second run.
I put a link to it on my sidebar over there. It even has its own countdown on it. I love countdowns.
Well, as you can tell from my previous post, I'm just about ready for school here. I've been doing a lot of reading in order to find the first week's copywork suggestions. Have have a lot of free magazines that I was reading through; I received a free subscription to Biblical Worldview Magazine when I purchased a history curriculum from American Vision a couple of years ago. Since I'm not the one that brings in the mail, things frequently arrive without me knowing and they just pile up. Well since I needed some copywork suggestions for the children for the first week of August, I decided to read through them. I also get Joyce Meyer's free magazine and will be reading through those as well. One year we subscribed to Christian History magazine and I'm trying to get through those as well.
A friend reminded me about the movie The Ultimate Gift and I thought I'd see if our library had it. Not only did they have it, but they had the book too. Needless to say, I requested both. As you might imagine, the book came available right away and I'm still waiting on the movie. I was thrilled to take a break from the periodicals and read this book. It was great! I got 7 pages of things I wrote down for my own copywork; I think I may have to purchase this book, as it is very motivational—or at least it makes me think. If you have not read the book, I highly recommend it. I cannot compare it to the book yet, because it has not yet made it to me as I am number 24 of 29 holds for this at the library. I requested the book, The Shack, at the same time and I'm 55 of 122 holds on that one; at least there are 50 copies of that one.
After reading the Ultimate Gift and went back to reading the magazines, I got very bogged down and I wanted to read something fun. I occasionally receive Love Inspired paperbacks, published by Steeple Hill Books, in the mail, free, so I picked up one of them and had a very enjoyable read!!! The one I picked up was called Rainbow's End. I guess the key message in it was that when you are in a troublesome situation and need to get back to God (if your thoughts of unfairness have pushed you away from Him), stop asking why and searching for answers, as it is probably that accusatory attitude that is keeping you from hearing your loving Father. It was a really great read! Thankfully, my library system has many of the books in the Love Inspired line by Steeple Books. But I do prefer longer novels, to "know" the characters better and stick with them over longer periods of time. Which reminds me of another great book series, Red River of the North by Lauraine Snelling; it starts with An Untamed Land. There are enough books in the series that you really get to "know" the characters.
I did go ahead and purchase the civics program I mentioned from CtT (Connect the Thoughts). I've told the boys that on the days that there is a movie to watch, they do not have to do any school other than our morning devos (there personal prayer time) and my read aloud (because we always enjoy that) and the civics because the estimated time for the lesson is 3 hours.
I also realized that the books Tiffany and I will be reading, Truth Seekers Mystery Series, will count as our science study since it deals with creation a lot. I'll see how it goes and add from our Considering God's Creation when needed. And although I have not written down exactly which audios we will listen to each day, I do know which ones I will start with and where I have the ones we will do next. The reason I don't have a detailed plan written yet, is because I'm not sure how long the first ones are and I don't want to have to replan. So, I will simply wait and see how long they are and if they will be done in one sitting or more, then I can make further plans. The first ones we will listen to are the Pebbly Brook Farm Stories from Remembrance Press. We may intersperse some audios from Homeschool Radio Shows, as I have a LOT of them from their weekly freebies AND I paid for a charter membership too, which was an awesome deal; I will definitely renew it this year as he gives so many great things to members (and not all audios either). BTW, he has a new freebie, Homeschool Freebie of the Day, where he gives something away free every day, Monday through Friday (Friday's freebie stays up all weekend). Many are things he has formatted but some are offerings from other places on the web, some by special arrangement of the author and other's just pointing us in the right direction. Right now the Homeschool Radio Shows freebies are mostly just "fun" audios but don't let that keep you from checking back each week, because he has made a huge variety of audios available to us from Les Miserables to Great Expectations to Great Gildersleeve to Father Knows Best and even fairy tales.
Well, I'm gonna run for now. I'll update my Library Thing soon so that you can see all the great things we will be/are reading.
I was just directed to a really kewl website. It is Library Thing. For a free account, you can catalog 200 books either that you own or are reading or want to read or whatever. For a $10 subscription, for a year, you can list as many as you like.
I figured I'd probably get to 200 too quickly so I started 3 accounts. One is my personal reading, one is Christmas books, and the last one is our school reading. I was going to insert links so that you could see my libraries but I'm not quite sure how to do that yet.
The website it neat because you can give each book a rating and it is averaged with all the other ratings it has received. Right in your library, you can see how many people have that book listed in their libraries and if they have made a review of it, you can read it, and you can make your own review. It has a suggester and even an UNsuggester. LOL!
I've been having fun setting up my libraries. It has a picture of the cover of the book; generally you can find the exact cover you have. Too cool!
Thanks to Jamin for this kewl find! BTW, her blog is Just Call Me Jamin! She finds freebies and shares them every Friday.
Since I'm talking about books, I'll share something that I changed in our homeschool last week. I was feeling like we weren't covering enough books. We read part of 5 books each day but it is slow going. So, I decided to assign each of the children a book to read for 'homework'. So I selected a book, after consulting several reading lists online, and got it from the library. I think I did give them some choice but not much.
Each day they must read a chapter of their book, quietly after normal school hours. Then the next school day during lunch, they each take turns narrating the chapter of the book they read the last school day. This way, we get to hear 3 more books without having to add any more time to our school day.
I've put the books that we are reading for school and they are reading for 'homework' in a library by our school name. I know that I can have a random book title from my library on my blog, but I don't know how to let someone see what is in my library. I'll keep checking it out.
This afternoon after the Green Bay/Kansas City football game, I kept the television on the same channel. A movie, The Day After Tomorrow—starring Dennis Quaid, was on. I wasn't sure what it was about and so I kept watching. Well, it boiled down to be a movie about global warming.
Come 5:30, it went to a commercial break and it never came back on. UGH! I do not know how this movie ended now! I called the station but got no person, so I left a message. Just a little bit ago, I emailed the Programming Director but my email was returned as undeliverable. So I have now emailed it the station manager. I would like to see the end of that movie, since I saw all the rest of it. How frustrating!
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Last night, we were supposed to change our clocks. I knew this; I'd been aware of it all week. But that did not stop me from going to bed last night without changing any of the clocks in my house.
Well, this morning I woke up at 8:15 and got up even though I was still very tired. I went in the living room and sat in my recliner, to have me personal time with the Lord. My dear husband brought me a cup of tea shortly after I sat down. Then it hit me! I didn't have to be up yet. As it turned out, we were later than I wanted to be. We like to get to church at 10; our service is supposed to start at 10:30. We didn't get there until about 10 after 10. What is with that? I had an extra hour to get ready and I did not take advantage of it.
I laid down for a nap earlier this afternoon. It wasn't a long nap but I still napped. Here it is 9:30 and I'm tired! That is crazy. I know it takes a while for my body to get caught up with the time changes. My body things I got up at 8:15 and it is now 10:30, which is bed time.
I kept it short tonight.
God Bless You,
Michele ºÜº
True Confessions: We have a Wii and we love video games. It all started when I was a teen. My dad brought home the most awesome game to play on our television. Table tennis! We all took turns playing together and being the 'winner'. It was lots of fun.
Then one day Dad came home with an Atari. Oh My! Rock our world! We gradually got more and more games. It was an awesome day when the Atari games were going out of 'style' and on sale for $5 each. Wow, we really loaded up.
I remember when we got Asteroids. I played that crazy thing for hours. My mom and I would compete to see who could get the highest score—I won. By today's standards it is a very lame game. lol But we loved it and the many other games we had. My youngest sister even bought a game disk that plays on the Playstation that has most of the best Atari games. Of course, it is still missing some of our favorites but my parents still love to play it.
When my dear husband and I got married back in '87, the man that was my husband's best man introduced to Nintendo. Oh My! I was hooked again! We ended up getting me one. I say me because my dear husband did not really care for it all that much but he loved me and got it for me. I loved it and took it to my parents and shared. They liked the Duck Hunt pretty good but not thrilled. (BTW, if a soda is ever spilt in a video game, go have it professionally cleaned. Don't ask me how I know, just trust me on this one.)
Then one day I saw the Super Nintendo. Even though I now had a toddler and a baby, I begged my sweetie to get it for me. He did! I loved Super Mario World and Donkey Kong Country. My toddler would sit and watch me play. Then he wanted to play. I gave him one of my old Nintendo controllers. This worked for many years. Then one day he got wise to me. LOL
Well, then in '97, we were down-sizing to move cross country. My boys were begging me for the new Nintendo (Nintendo 64). I told them if I could sell some of their toys (lots of them) and we could get enough money for one, then I would let them get one. Well, we did and Mario was still FUN to play.
When the Gamecube came out, the boys got that for Christmas. So, as you can see, we have loved Nintendo for many years. Through the years, we've gotten other game systems and games also. When the Playstation came out, my brother-in-law got one. We got together with them every Saturday and my guys would all play whatever game, on the Playstation. Their favorite was Hot Shots Golf.
Then came Halo and my dear bil got that and my dear sweet husband found he loved first person shooting games. Bummer! How was I going to keep my boys from playing these games when their dad liked to play them. Well, I could justify that game because they were shooting aliens. (See my entry on guns.)
Now, if you've stayed with me this long, I'll finally get to the point. One of the things that people have against video games is that there is no activity beyond the hands and an occasional leg kicking. Well, the Wii has changed all that!!! They have taken a very sedentary game and made it active.
The game that comes with the Wii is "Wii Sports." There is tennis, bowling, baseball, golf, and boxing. With these games, you actually stand and act as if you are playing the sport. It is really a lot of fun and activity. I was sore after playing it. There are some games that are not as active but many use a lot of arm movement and even some leg movement.
We took our Wii to my parents. They absolutely love the bowling!!! They ended up buying one. My sister and bil love it as well—they are now owners of a Wii. If your kids want to play video games, this is the best game system to get because of the activity level.
Well, my beloved Mario is coming out next this month on the Wii, so it seems! I'm wondering if I'm going to get it when it comes out or if I'm going to have to wait until Christmas. LOL! It looks like it will be really fun, just like all Mario Nintendo games. I'm hoping Donkey Kong will make his Wii debut early next year; hmmm, maybe for my birthday.
In all seriousness, if your child is begging for a video game, this is the one to get. And no, I get absolutely no gain from promoting it. I just love it. Oh, one final note, we got Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix. This was one very fun active game! It uses Mario and Luigi so there is no immodestly dressed characters to be concerned about and no lewd movements. The cool thing is that it can be used with the Wii.
We finished the Narnia series today. It was happy/sad; happy because we enjoyed them so much but sad because we are now done with them. Where do we go from here? What book(s) do you read AFTER reading about Narnia?
The children have come away with a quote or two from the series. The first is "To Narnia and the North" but generally it must be said with a horsey neighing type voice because that is the kind of voice I used for Bree in The Horse and His Boy. I do have to admit that I didn't think I'd like this one as much as the others, and I really did. It was a fun book. Also it showed a little about understanding 'your own story' and not knowing the details of other people's stories and also about consequences of our choices.
The other that the children have repeated many times since we read the book, is from The Silver Chair. This one is said by the owls, in a very high hooting type voice. "Too true; too true." I like to use different voices when I read stories aloud to the children. Of course, it can get a little confusing if I forget what voice I used for a character and have to change it. This happened once and the kids told me that it wasn't right; I never did get it back the way I'd done it the first time. This is one good reason to start a new book when you will be reading it for a few days in a row before breaking, and even then, there are no guarantees.
I guess I will start reading The Wilderking Trilogy by Jonathan Rogers tomorrow. I've heard good things about it. My youngest has already read the whole trilogy but she checked it out of the library again yesterday to re-read it because she loved it so much. I wanted to read it, so this will be a good time to do so.
We read 2 of the Lord of the Rings books last year. I need to read the last one but it will definitely have to wait until we get to some light school days—days that we have a lighter school load. Why will it have to wait until then? Because the chapters are humongous!!! It really bogged us down with everything else we were doing last year and I got overwhelmed. Maybe reading it aloud during a less stressful time of the school year will make it more enjoyable.
Speaking of light weeks, we will be reading some Christmas stories beginning right after Thanksgiving. My daughter has a book of Christmas stories, I guess it is an anthology of sorts; this will be her book to read aloud. I will read Tabitha's Travels by Arnold Ytreeide. We enjoyed his other two advent books. I just didn't have an established time to read before. Now, we will really be able to enjoy it daily, like it is meant to be.
I also have a number of picture books that I have collected for Christmas, that I love. We haven't read them in a few years so I think my middle son will read some of these aloud to us. I'm not sure what else we will read. I'd love some good Christmas suggestions. It is hard to believe that the time is so close! I'm getting excited! How about you?
I fully intended to make an entry last night but the power went out at about 8:15pm and stayed out until 11:15pm. Needless to say, I did not get around to making that entry. We ended up going to bed about an hour earlier than usual because of said power outage, which is perfectly fine, since I seemed to have needed a good night's sleep.
If we went to bed early last night, you might be wondering how I know that the electricity came back on at about 11:15pm. We generally sleep with a fan on at night, year round. So before we went to bed, with the windows open, I turned it on so that when the electricity finally did come on, it would start circulating the air. Well, all of a sudden, I awoke to the feel of the blowing fan and saw that there were lights on in the other room (we had the door open for airflow). So I got up, stepped over my children who were sleeping in the living room—for whatever reason, my dh said they could—and turned off the light. I then saw that the TV was on, so I turned it off too. It felt a little stuffy, so I turned on the fan for them and covered up my dd. Then I started the dishwasher and went to bed. All of that, without any movement at all, by any of my children! Amazing!
It can be REALLY dark, out in the country when the power is out!! It was definitely interesting getting to the bathroom in the dark, especially since there were several obstacles in the way. I tried going very slowly and very carefully, but I still ran into two things. AND the matches weren't where we normally keep them either. Thankfully, the kerosene lamp hadn't moved.
The kids and I enjoyed ourselves. We played a game of Super Racko but then my dh was ready for bed (a.k.a. bored—because he doesn't like to play board games). Thus, we went to bed early.
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I hesitate to mention television shows or movies because people's views are so varied on them. What is funny to me may not be funny to someone else. A show that I allow my family to watch, may be something frowned upon in another's home.
I grew up in a denomination that frowned on television and disallowed movies (at least in the theater). Our family did own a television though, but we did not go to the movie theater. I remember once when we had moved into a new house and my parents got cable. We had a slate roof and after the guy had installed it, he came inside and was showing my mother how to use it. Then he showed her the Starz channel. Well, we hadn't ordered the Starz channel and we were NOT about to pay for the Starz channel. But the technician said that he wasn't about to go back up on that roof, we'd have it for free.
Some time later, we were watching "Smokey and the Bandit". My little sister was only about 2 or so. They said the "s" word; because of its timing in the show and the way it was said, we laughed. Well my little sister decided to add the new word to her vocabulary. She turned around and said it several times. Of course, my mother took care of the situation but it left me with the memory of how easy it is for people to pick up words they hear. My mom found creative ways of tuning out sections of movies that were not appropriate for us to see.
All of that to say, I come from a family that loves clean TV shows and movies. Unfortunately, an otherwise clean movie, may have one little part in it that needs to be skipped or it may have a word in it that shouldn't be there. Well, the solution to the second problem is actually easier than the first—it is called TV Guardian and it filters out bad language. Unfortunately, the only fix we have come up with for the second problem is to turn the channel. Thus before watching a movie in the theater, I check a movie review like screenit to find out if there is anything bad in it.
Why do I mention all this? Well, it is because we love TV shows and movies and I'd love to make blog entry or a webpage about them some time but do NOT want people to think badly of me because of our choices. It is funny because my sister and her husband hold to a lot of our same views on this matter but yet we sometimes watch something that they would never think of watching and vice versa. So, I'd love to know what you all think about the subject.
Having said all that, there is one show that I think I can recommend without any apprehension—well unless you avoid ALL violence in a show (more on that later). The show is Sue Thomas F.B.Eye. This is a show that is currently on ION television (the channel that used to be PAX) on Tuesday and Wednesday nights. It is about a deaf woman that works for the FBI. We really enjoy the show. But as you can imagine, since it is the FBI there are guns and some 'violence' in it but it truly is very little. It is a very moral show from what I can tell. There are no longer any NEW episodes on but thankfully they are re-showing them.
When my boys were little I did not let them have guns, not even water guns (we used water animals instead). One day I found them out in the yard playing and what did they have? Sticks. But what were they using these sticks as? Guns.
I had an older friend who had children my age that told me one day that she thought not allowing a child to play with play guns was not right. She thought it better to teach them the right purposes for using guns rather than banning them altogether. She encouraged her grandson to 'hunt'. I filed that information away for later.
Then I'd heard or read an article by a Christian man that said it was not good to keep toy guns away from children because God had made man to be a protector. Hmmm . . . now I had more food for thought. When I realized that my boys were playing with 'guns', I decided to talk to them about HOW they were playing with their 'guns'. They told me they were shooting dinosaurs. So I gave them firm guidelines on playing with 'guns' and that if they 'shot' at people, they would not be allowed to play with their 'guns' any longer.
One day I caught one of them chasing the other with his 'gun'. I found out that they were playing cops and robbers. I told them that they were NOT ALLOWED to be bad guys!!! AND they are not allowed to 'shoot' at people. They lost their 'gun' privileges for a while.
Well, once again it appears that I have named this blog appropriately—Ramblings—as it seems that I have done that yet again.
(Me and my dd, Tiffany on an easy to climb tree limb on vacation in VA in 2007.) These are my ramblings on homeschooling and whatever else comes to mind.
Counting Down
The Holidays are over and I'm not quite ready to start a new count down yet. Maybe I should start a counting up the number of days I've stayed on my "diet".
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I do not know how this movie ended now! I called the station but got no person, so I left a message. Just a little bit ago, I emailed the Programming Director but my email was returned as undeliverable. So I have now emailed it the station manager. I would like to see the end of that movie, since I saw all the rest of it. How frustrating!
Well, I could justify that game because they were shooting aliens. (See my 
