Owings Ohana Homeschool - Homeschool Blogger

Why am I not good at this??

Mon, 4 Jun 2007 19:49:00 -0500

I'm just not good at this blogging thing. It's been 6 months since I last blogged! I guess I'm just busy....Alot has happened the first 6 months of this year. Mostly, hubby got orders and for you non-military families that means we move. We have a house here (Hawaii) and we are trying to sell it. I'm really trying to be patient and work on God's timeline but that is easier said than done! So if anyone wants to say a little prayer....we could use them. We've had lots of lookers, even lowered our price but so far no takers. Maybe God's buyer isn't on island yet.

We are suppose to be headed to TX. At least we know hubby is. El Paso - Ft Bliss to be exact. Anyone out there from there? We are all excited about the move. Even the oldest who says he's not...I know down deep he's excited about a change. He loves Hawaii though and this is "home" to him.

We are almost done with our school year. Just finishing up a few things. My boys are going to camp most this summer (at least we think so) They are both going to be Eagle Scouts by the first part of July! they have their Board of Review this week....so excited. I've been working as hard as I can to have their Scout albums finished in time for their Eagle Court of Honor. They deserve it. They've worked very hard.

I'll try to pop in and write more often...it'd probably do me good.

Why not listen for once?

Wed, 20 Dec 2006 19:14:00 -0600

A fellow homeschool parent, innocently mentioned to me one day how their family listens to books instead of reading all the time. She was explaining how it was a nice change of pace and actually the cost wasn't much more than purchasing a book and sometimes even less. I had to check this out. So I did and I LOVE it! AUDIBLE.COM (http://www.audible.com) has a very wide selection of books available for purchase. You can download them onto your computer, iPod, MP3 player and more! Once purchased, they are available for downloading as many times as you'd like. They have several different payment plans. You have the option to be a member or not; however, the cost is higher if you are not a member. We purchased the yearly plan. Audible Listener is available for $9.95 a year. We receive about an average of a 30% discount and can purchase a book anytime. For those listeners who would buy more, they offer a Gold & Platinum membership as well with opportunities to earn credits towards books.

Why would we do this? I have 3 children - 12; 14 and 16. We use a curriculum that calls for some old classics which, even I admit, can be difficult in reading smoothly sometimes. The children love this idea of being able to listen (and follow along in the book). It's worked very well for us.

We've listened to Beowulf (an epic poem in Old English set in the Viking era). My oldest is currently listening to The Scarlet Letter by Nathanel Hawthorne and we just purchased A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. We've read A Christmas Tale before and we watch it each Christmas season, but thought we'd listen to it this year for a change.

Time Flies....

Thu, 7 Dec 2006 14:04:00 -0600

when life is busy! I cannot believe it's been so long since I've blogged. I really should and want to make this at least a weekly thing. I really enjoy it out here. I think I found I was spending too much time reading blogs and ignoring the things of the household. We've also have a very good school year. I cannot believe we are 1/2 way done. It's our 8th year and it seems I'm finally getting this thing down! LOL It's been a very productive, successful year to date.

We are anxious for yet another Christmas here in Hawaii. It's our 6th Christmas season here. It's hard to believe we've been here longer than anywhere else in our 19 years of marriage! This is really where our children call "home".

We've been so busy this year. I cannot believe it's almost over and 2007 is right around the corner.....I think I'll add blogging more often on my list of resolutions this year LOL

Mele Kalikimaka (Merry Christmas)

A good blog to read

Sun, 23 Jul 2006 16:29:00 -0500

I happen to just randomly come across Saved By Grace's blog today and she's got a great article on homeschoolers and socialization published at CNSNews.com. Why not run by and read it for yourself! I think you'll be encouraged by it.

Movie Reviews

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 04:55:00 -0500

Our recent Netflix viewings were the following....All great choices for families in my opinion. I've linked the movie to Netflix, hopefully it gets ya to the right place if you want to check it out!

The Gospel...if you've not seen this one you should. It's rated PG and apporpriate for most family members. It's a story about a son who drifts from God and returns home 15 yrs later when he finds his dad is ill. I guess one could say a modern day prodigal son story. Great story, great music. 5 thumbs up

The World's Fastest Indian....another good family flick. My husband and children really enjoyed it. It was good but I wasn't really in the mood to watch a movie at the time. Based on a true story. 5 thumbs up

Eight Below....EXCELLENT family film. Might be scary in a couple of parts for little ones but overall it's a great family film. A little slow in some parts. What amazing creatures those dogs are. Truely amazing. Also based on a true story. 5 thumbs up

No excuses...okay maybe a few....

Mon, 10 Jul 2006 04:41:00 -0500

It's been a full month AGAIN since I last blogged. For some reason I just can't seem to make this a priority. I had a response left on my blog more or less asking about life here in Hawaii and a request to blog more about that. I can't promise but I will say I'll try do that more often.

My boys, husband included, headed off to Boy Scout camp this week. It's the annual summer camp. This year however, they went to Maui's camp. How cool is that huh? I can't wait to see pictures when they return. We put them on a plane this morning. It only took about 30 minutes for them to fly there. That leaves my daughter and I a week to have girl time. We decided to jet off to Maui as well (fair is fair!) We leave on Tuesday morning, stay the night and head home Wednesday night. I've never been so this will be new. I want to hit the old whaling town of Lahaina and we are going to do the Maui Ocean Center as well.

We've been on summer break a few weeks now. I hope to take a day this week and get started on reorganizing the bookshelves and school stuff for the upcoming year. I know I'll need more than a day but at least that's a start. I have one last curricula order to put in with CBD.com I really need to do that.

I've done a few home improvements (painted the kitchen/living area) this week. It feels good to accomplish something ya know?

I can't believe it's July already. Child #2 turns 14 next week.... FOURTEEN! (#1 turns 16 in Sept) Where does the time go?? It just seems to be fleeting by so quickly now that they are older.

Much Aloha everyone and I hope your summer has been fantastic so far!

It's been too long!

Tue, 13 Jun 2006 02:16:00 -0500

Wow! It's been way too long since I last blogged. I'm horrible at keeping up with this kind of stuff.

We are on our "modified" summer schedule. The kids still have some reading to do over the summer but for the most part we have our days free. For me that means scrapbooking! I've finished 18 pages in the last week. I hope to get alot done over the summer vacation.

School wise, we've ordered all but 2 subjects for the fall. I still need to order Rosetta Stone (Spanish) and bible for the boys. My daughter and I are going to do a mother/daughter study in the fall (at her request). Doing lesson plans should be much easier on me this year as we are now comfortable with our curriculum and I can use what's already been done. For example: my oldest finished Physical Science but my middle one will be going thru that this year and my daughter will be doing General Science which my middle one just finished. There fore in Science I only have to draw up Biology for my oldest and thanks to Donna Young.org it's practically done for me.

My daughter is taking guitar lessons. My boys are wrapped up with Boy Scout stuff this summer. My oldest is camping the next 6 out of 7 weeks. He's attending the National Jr. Leadership Training this week. In July he'll be working as part of the staff at the local Boy Scout camp. The second week of July, my husband and both boys head off to Maui for a week of summer camp with their troop (must be nice huh??)

That's about it here for now.

I'll try to blog more but sometimes I just don't know what to blog about!

Much Aloha!

6 Arrested in Alaska school shooting plot

Wed, 3 May 2006 14:43:00 -0500

April 23rd http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12442731/

I came across this on Fiffi's blog.

This is just another reminder (and reason) why we homeschool!

In the first article they site another school shooting happening: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12409480/ This was in a community of about 600 people! A place, in my opinion, where something like this is not expected.

CLEP Lesson Plans

Wed, 3 May 2006 12:32:00 -0500

This is a great site that provides CLEP Lesson Plans.

We plan to CLEP as much as possible with our children to get them that headstart on college. This site is a great resource to help anyone get started!

It just wasn't meant to be....

Mon, 24 Apr 2006 20:38:00 -0500

I'm very sad today. I got word this morning that after several months of tests, although I'm very healthy, I'm unable to give my father a kidney. I've blogged on this in the past but long story short my father has kidney failure. He had a heart transplant 10 years ago which is still working fine but over time, his kidneys have just worn out. I was the 3rd person to go through this process to be denied. I was really wanting this more than anything. Last week I was so hopeful. We were nearing the end of the tests to rule anything out and so this morning was a huge blow to me.

I am very healthy as I said but if they were to take a kidney, my function left would be only about 50% which means I have some kidney not working to its fullest I guess. Nothing unusal really, many of us have kidneys that don't work at completely 100% but that doesn't make something wrong with us. But for me, it means they cannot put me at risk in the long term and leave me with kidney failure or something else in years to come.

Many people I've shared this with are surprised at how long of a journey this has been. It's more than just a match. I match but I still cannot donate.

So in the meantime, daddy still needs a kidney. Please pray for our family and particular my mom. I cannot imagine watching a spouse have to go through what my father does. By the grace of God he's doing well all things considered but it is only by God he's still alive. He's not on dialysis yet, they don't want to do that because of his previous heart transplant but if they have to they will. They put a port in back in December but have been able to hold off. Now that I cannot donate Im not sure how much longer they'll hold off. For anyone, this is not a quick process but at least 3-6 months.

It's been a very emotional day to say the least and once it all soaks in and I have time to process it, I'll share if the Lord leads me. My children were so disappointed but looking back just a few hours ago to this morning I see where this was a wonderful opportunity to instill in them that we do not have to be angry or mad at God or even doubt Him. It's all in the Lord's hands and we need to find peace with that if we are struggling with it.

Thanks for letting me share this here.