Do Not Grow Weary - Homeschool Blogger

Breaking News ... Just Seen in MY Front Yard!

Tue, 18 Mar 2008 13:24:00 -0500

A Roadrunner! My daughter Bethany took this photo through the window (that is why it is a bit blurry). She and Rebekah followed it down the street but were unable to get more pictures. A little bit of excitement in our day! :)

~ Rachelle

A Little Bit of Brown ... with Bears!

Sat, 15 Mar 2008 11:08:00 -0500

~ Rachelle

Spring ... Yellow Snap Dragon

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 18:45:00 -0500

~ Rachelle

Spring ... Lemons

Mon, 10 Mar 2008 14:43:00 -0500

~ Rachelle

Spring ... Plum Blossoms

Sat, 8 Mar 2008 12:36:00 -0600

~ Rachelle

Spring ... Apple Blossoms

Thu, 6 Mar 2008 17:37:00 -0600

I love Spring!

~ Rachelle

A Little Bit of Blue ...

Wed, 5 Mar 2008 18:10:00 -0600

~ Rachelle

28 Weeks and It's a ...

Mon, 25 Feb 2008 13:38:00 -0600

Boy! After being blessed with four daughters, we are having a son!

I had my first ultrasound ... ever, I never had one with any of my daughters ... last Thursday. Baby looked wonderful. It was really fun. The technician was nice and talkative. I am so thankful she was willing to point things out and answer our questions.

A boy! :)

~ Rachelle

My Wonderful News

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 11:18:00 -0600

My postings have gotten a little scare here on my blog and this time I really do have a very good reason. We have been really busy and I am feeling pretty good and experiencing a remission of sorts from chronic illness but the most important blessed wonderful reason is … I am going to have a baby! Baby is due mid May of 2008. I, and my family, are soooo very excited!

The extreme tiredness of early pregnancy has past and I am feeling pretty good. I am hoping to start blogging again.

So there is my wonderful news … another sweet baby on the way. :)

~ Rachelle

Giving Thanks for Thanksgiving.

Fri, 23 Nov 2007 19:01:00 -0600

Yesterday was such a wonderful day. I am so incredibly blessed with family and friends. We had, including my sweet husband and girls, 38 people present for Thanksgiving dinner.

Every family brought food. We had quite a wonderfully delicious array … turkey, gravy, two different types of cornbread dressing, bread dressing, cranberry sauce (not from a can!), mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole (with nuts and sugary stuff on top, sweet potatoes with butter, green bean casserole, asparagus/bacon something (I cannot remember the name :) ), cheese ball and crackers, olive melody, raw veggies with ranch dip, black olives, Kamut rolls, white rolls, ambrosia, pumpkin pie, two type of cheese cake, truffles, chocolate covered peanut butter balls, homemade whipped cream, carrot cake, coffee, tea, sparkling fruit juices, spiced apple cider and of course water.

We had 24 children between the ages of 3 months to 17 years. What fun was had by all. We have this big yellow garden cart and it was the hit of the day. Rides all over the yard for hours … my lawn is flat! Ha!!

And oh the conversation … what a joy! Add in guitar playing, singing and an old fashioned musical bottle blowing concert! What else could be wanted?

The wonderful ladies even cleaned the kitchen, did all the dishes, directed yard clean up and the gathering of all trash. That made me want to cry. I have been able to rest and recover today … I am soo very blessed.

Our first guests arrived between 12-12:30 and the last left after 11:00. Such sweet fellowship! What a wonderful, wonderful blessed day!!

~ Rachelle

Rambling Thoughts on a Tuesday �

Tue, 16 Oct 2007 19:59:00 -0500

This weekend we spent quite a bit of time trying to tame the remains of a six cubic square yard pile of dirt but I will not write about that here since I am supposed to be posting about those things on my poor lonely homestead blog! Our yard work did bring us two interesting finds … another real live scorpion and a scorpion skin. The real live scorpion was hiding in the crack at the base of the house under the front door mat. I was in the house and did not get to see this one but I did hear loud shouts from out front. My six year old daughter was the one who found it walking across the patio. It is getting a little cold here for scorpions to be active (yay!!!). My family told me this one was moving very, very slowly. We did not choose to keep this one as a temporary pet … he/she met their end with several thuds of a shovel at Bethany’s hand! A little later we found a scorpion skin in the garage. Scorpions shed their skins as they grow and leave behind evidence that they were indeed in that spot! Soooo, since we found a skin, we know there is at least one more hiding … somewhere in the garage.

Today after many months of putting it off … I finally tuned the harp. And I taught Bethany how to do it. Passing along the job of harp tuning … yay! She has been asking me to tune it for a long while. I kept forgetting and often when I did remember, the house was much too noisy. I tune with an electronic tuner and it must be somewhat quiet so it can pick up the string sound. I can hardly wait until Bethany masters the harp and can play songs. I love harp music.

I started MUS with my littles today. It was fun and easy … I hope it stays that way! :)

Sourdough bread … we are on a search for a new starter. I may just have to start my own. Our last starter did not have a nice taste. It was not sour but rather sweet.

We recently had another temporary pet … a Carolina Sphinx Moth. My husband found it at work. We only kept it one night because it was so unhappy living in a gallon jar (I do not blame it one bit!). Homeschooling up close and personal is such fun. A much better way to learn than studying drawings or photographs in some book.

My sweet husband is on his way home and I want to get this posted before he arrives.

~ Rachelle

Rambling Thoughts on a Friday �

Fri, 5 Oct 2007 12:15:00 -0500

- October -

How did it get to be October already? Where did the rest of the year go? I am loving the cooler weather. It is still hot but better. :)

- Scorpion -

I am sad to report that our “pet” scorpion … who we named Exodus because that is what he was soon to do …has died. We are not good scorpion keepers! It was very interesting to watch him for several days. We gave him a cricket to eat but all they did was wonder around and jump at and away from each other. And I can say that crickets are defiantly not vegetarians … the cricket was caught feasting on Exodus dead remains!

- Gardening -

We have finally begun working on our Fall yard and garden to do list … more on my homestead blog …

- Cooking -

Our newest adventure ... sourdough.

- Silly things –

Is it really October or maybe it is December?! Here at our house we are having a temporary December. We listened to Christmas music yesterday, started making lists of projects/gifts we need to start working on and even watched a Christmas movie last night!!! More Christmas music today and then back to October we will go.

~ Rachelle

Adventures in Homeschooling � Scorpions

Mon, 17 Sep 2007 16:45:00 -0500

I think it must be a common homeschool trait to take something that is not ideal and turn it into a homeschool project. We are now the proud (?!?) owners of a temporarily still alive, in a canning jar on our kitchen counter .. scorpion. Not only just a scorpion but an Arizona Bark scorpion, the most deadly scorpion in America!

We will have lived in our home for 9 years this year and had never seen a scorpion until recently. Over the last 2-3 months we have found two small live ones in our garage and 1 larger dead one (killed by one of our cats) in our living room. I love my wonderful bug/mice/scorpion catching and killing cats and we are now considering getting another one!

Please pray for us if we come to mind, we would like to find a way to rid our property of these interesting but scary creatures without using poison. We learned about getting rid of their food source and removing any comfortable looking possible scorpion residences. We bought two blacklights and have gone on scorpion searches … we have not found any that way. We have added another cat to our wish list as I mentioned above.

God’s creation always awes me and I can easily find beauty in it but there are several of His creations I do not want to live in close proximity to … scorpions are one of them! :)

Our newest “pet” …

I am sorry it is not clearer, mason jars are not the ideal thing to take a picture through!

Plans are in the works for a scorpion picture taking session (including blacklight photos I am sure) and drawings to be done before our “friend” is … well, no longer with us.

~ Rachelle

Birthday Roses and Blogging News

Thu, 6 Sep 2007 10:48:00 -0500

My sweet husband gave me these for my birthday. :)

I know that I wrote I was back to blogging about a month or so ago but have only posted four times! I am sorry about that. I am hopefully truly back now.

I have decided to re-open my Homestead Blogger blog and to start posting most of my gardening and kitchen posts there. Fall is coming and that means it is time to start gardening again. I love sharing pictures of my garden and it just seems like more of a homestead topic. :) Here is the link in case you would like to come visit me over there:

My Homestead Blogger Blog

~ Rachelle

A Noisy Summer Visitor

Fri, 17 Aug 2007 17:58:00 -0500

Desert Cicada
Diceroprocta apache

~ Rachelle

Playing in the Rain

Tue, 7 Aug 2007 16:06:00 -0500

Volunteer Trees

Wed, 1 Aug 2007 17:15:00 -0500

I mentioned the volunteer trees, which need to be removed from my garden, in yesterday’s entry. There are at least six trees (I am not sure what they are) and several Palm trees. I will miss all this lovely green when they are removed! The trees …

That is my oldest daughter exploring amongst the trees ...

Much work to do. Work put off til another day ... makes more work later!

Rachelle

I am back! :)

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 13:10:00 -0500

Hello. I am back. :) I decided to come back early from my blogging Summer Vacation. I have missed blogging, I have missed sharing pictures of my garden and things around my home. Since I kept having those … “ I should blog about this” thoughts I decided I would just come back and blog.

I can hardly believe that this is the last day of July. Summer is already half over. Amazing! I am trying to embrace Summer but find myself longing for Fall. We have had some cooler weather the last week or so that has only increased my desire for the end of Summer.

One of my goals for this Summer was to teach my daughters to swim. Not one of them could swim. I have wanted to teach them but never had the opportunity when I was able. Sooo, this Summer we bought an above ground pool. It is only 15 x 4 but it is big enough and deep enough to learn to swim. I now have three swimmers and my youngest has become very comfortable with the water and does swim with a floaty suit on. I hope to have her swimming without the floaty suit by the end of Summer.

Owning a pool, even a small one, comes with a big new chore … cleaning it! And this is the land of Monsoon season and that means dust storms. I do admit that we have not had a usual season, we have only had a few days with dust blowing. BUT those few days filled our pool with much dirt that I am still trying to get out! Temporary above ground pools come with these tiny little pumps and teeny little filters that fill up and need to be changed/rinsed very often when you are trying to remove lots of dirt from the pool! AND those little filters are very expensive considering what they are made of. We have been doing a lot of filter rinsing. :)

Our garden is still in pretty good shape this year. The red tomatoes stopped producing but the little yellow pear tomatoes are still growing. We have peppers on the Anaheim green chili plant while the jalepeno and bell pepper plants are taking a pepper producing rest. Our volunteer trees and palm trees are doing great. Big, beautiful and so very green! I will miss all that bushy greenness when we finally remove them. I had planned to take them out when they were still small and grow them in pots but time got away from us and now they are too big to transplant. Why do we have all these volunteer trees? I think it is because of the birds, especially the Grackles, bring the seeds to our garden when the bubblers are on to soak them in the water. They also bring dog food from the neighbors houses. Silly birds … or is that smart birds?! :)

I do appreciate the volunteer lantana plants that somehow got into my garden. They are a very pretty white variety that I really like. Other fun volunteers are the Tobacco Trees. They grow very tall and when they bloom they are covered with pretty yellow flowers. We have one growing in our dog’s potty yard right now. The poor thing is bending over terribly, it got knocked over in a dust storm.

Another volunteer …

We went to our state’s homeschool convention a couple weeks ago. I love the curriculum hall … so many wonderful books, curriculum and other fun things. We mostly bought fun things this year since we already have most of the curriculum we need for now. One of our favorite buys was several lamplighter books. My oldest loves those books, well, I think all my girls do but she gets such pleasure and joy from reading that a new stack books makes her very happy. We are planning to start American History in September and found a game that is a great accent for our studies, it is called Way Back When In History. Various books, cds and videos also somehow made it home with us from the convention.

We had a wonderful time eating lunch with several families from our church on the first day of the convention. We went to a Mexican food restaurant not far from the convention center. I am so blessed by my church family!

Well, this has gotten long so I will end it now. I have more to say but will save it for another post!

Have a blessed wonderful day!

Rachelle

Summer Vacation

Sat, 9 Jun 2007 14:14:00 -0500

Hi! I justed wanted to let you all know that I am putting my blog on Summer Vacation. I am not sure if I will be posting a little or not at all. There are sooo many things I want to do with my family this Summer that I am planning to drastically reduce the amount of time I spend on the internet.

Have a wonderful blessed Summer everyone!

~ Rachelle

Another Question

Sat, 9 Jun 2007 14:08:00 -0500

I enjoyed seeing someone else who appreciates the nourishing benefits of making one's own keifer. I enjoy making pancakes and baked goods with it too, as they turn out wonderfully moist. Can you share how to make cream cheese from keifer? Thanks so much and God bless. Mrs. B

~ We pour the kefir (you can use yogurt too) into a flour sack towel (we also have a cotton bag that was made for this purpose), tie the corners together and then hang over a bowl to drain. You can buy contraptions just for this purpose. You can also hang the bag on a wooden spoon laid across the top of a tall bowl or a pitcher. We have also made small quantities by pouring the kefir into a coffee filter placed into a small strainer and then set upon a cup.

Next, you let it drain until it reaches the consistency you desire. Some people like to put it in the refrigerator while it is draining. I think this would probably give you a milder cheese. The liquid that collects into the cup or bowl is called whey and can be used for making other things (soaked oatmeal, fermented vegetables, ect…).

Warning … this cheese is stronger than cream cheese and takes some getting used to. :)