You know your kiddos are bored when you see this and find out who did it. However, in co-op this morning the Bible lesson involved the question "Is the cup half empty or half full?" So maybe rather than looking at this as boredom maybe I'll look at this as creativity and fun! Yea, that's the ticket!

We're going on a road trip!

A very long road trip!

Four kids and a dog!

I'm not scared!

"Are we there yet?"

Can't stop hearing them.

Can't stop seeing them.

Can't stop keeping them.

"No, no, no!"

 

We're going on a road trip!

A very long road trip!

Four kids and a dog!

I'm not scared!

"He touched me!"

Can't stop hearing them.

Can't stop seeing them.

Can't stop keeping them.

"Oh you guys! Sigh. Oh you guy! Sigh. Oh you guys! Sigh."

Where does the time go?! We have been busy with school as well as all the other things that go along with being a part of a family. We are about to enter the last week of our second quarter...which means it is just about time for WINTER BREAK! Woo-hoo! Yea, we are a bit ready for a break, not to mention we just found out that we will be able to go home to Florida to spend Thanksgiving with our parents, family, and friends. We can't wait! In the meantime, here is a lot of catching up from the past couple of weeks. Enjoy!

As I've mentioned before, we love our new library. A few weeks ago I posted a picture of the new statue of Mary Draper Ingles. Here are some pictures of the sitting area on the second floor that we like to visit. It is so enjoyable to treat ourselves to a soda from the soda machine, a snack (we brought left over muffins from breakfast on this day), and to sit in front of these magnificent windows. When it is snowing out the view is all the more magnificent!

We finally got around to carving our little pumpkins.

The leaves also finally fell out of the trees. The kids had so much fun raking leaves not only from our backyard, but from surrounding yards as well. After they made a big ol' pile of leaves, Della came running in and asked if I'd take their picture. She set up Claira in her spot. Although Claira doesn't look like she's enjoying herself, she really was. Della also placed TJ and herself in these perfect spots and pretty much ran the "photo shoot"...I just snapped away.

We love our dog, Maggie, so much, she might as well be one of the kids since she is definitely one of the family. It is so amazing how much personality she has and the fact that she can very clearly communicate her needs and wants. In fact, as I type this, Maggie is being hand fed chunks of ice from Della's cup. No, I'm not the only one who spoils her...but I do seem to be the only one who has her for a shadow.

Like so many families, ours is not exempt from the kayos and craziness that comes with living together with other personalities, needs, wants, desires, likes, dislikes, various out-of-the-house activities, etc. Before I knew it we had become a family that was fussing, arguing, disrespectful to and with each other...and I include myself in this. I sat wondering what in the world happened to our happy family. Where had our joy gone. Now mind you, I am not saying we never had problems and conflict, but it wasn't usually non-stop, day in and day out. I came across this wonderful teaching of how to keep our lives in balance...because the Lord knows, it wasn't balanced. In Stormie Ormartian's book, Praying through the Deeper Issues of Marriage, Stormie taught that keeping a balance in a marriage consists of God being first, spouse second, children third, and then everything else will fall into it's place. Yes, it sounds simple, and it is...but not always simple to do when you don't keep your focus in priority. So....I figured since this order of balance worked so well for me in my marriage, it would work just as well for the kids. So here it is...and yes, it has caused them to think or rethink some actions and/or words.

I don't know why it seems to catch me by surprise when I find myself typing, saying, or thinking the word "battle" lately. Especially knowing that one BIG quote God placed in my life earlier this year, "Be brave, you were made for this". I suppose I tend to think of battle as being something that involves blood, weapons, fatalities, men, and destruction. I even tend to think of a battle as being more like something seen in "Braveheart" rather than war movies. A more "intimate" confrontation, if you will, that is handled face-to-face rather than from a distance with the aide of firearms and other machinery defenses.

Why am I stuck on this word lately? It is because I recently have come to terms and admitted that I am at battle. In the battle I am in there are no fatalities or bloodshed. However, there is brokenness and injury that is not seen by the naked eye...only the All Seeing Eye. There aren't any visible weapons or destruction either...they are also unseen by the naked eye. The All Seeing Eye sees differently though.

Who am I at battle against? satan and his many principalities. It's not that satan has never shown his face in my life before, trust me, he's had his fair share of "fun" in my life just as he has in yours. Over the past year, however, he has done to this battle what Emeril likes to do to his recipes..."Kick it up a notch!" I've been in full force battle, but looking back I believe I've been living in denial of this. Or is it that I knew the battle had become more intense so I decided to kick it up a notch with my own will and determination?

Over the past week God has finally convinced me to allow Him to be the General of this battle rather than myself. To release all of my...well, there really isn't anything to release other than God's Power! I thought I was the general of this battle...MY battle. However, I lack knowledge and understanding on how to use the weapons God has equipped me with. I did not understand the language of the orders given to me to win this battle...or perhaps I chose not to read them just as I tend to skip reading "how to put this together" directions to the latest and greatest toys my kids get at Christmas.

This morning as I pulled out a winter jacket to wear to church (yes, winter weather has finally arrived), I put my hands into my pockets. Isn't that always fun to do at the beginning of each winter? You just never know what you will find! I found notes from Wednesday night church, January 30, 2008. The title of this teaching, "Courage to Face Your Giants: Portraits of Courage".  I knew I needed to take time later to review these notes, and so I did. It wasn't until I saw the very last note on this page which I had written down ten months ago that I realized God made sure that I preserved this paper for this day. What was that final note that struck me so significantly?

"The battle belongs to the Lord."

 

 

 

I recently came across a great song titled "I Will Not Forget You". Since we are in the month that our nation starts thinking about Thanksgiving...this song is perfect to get our hearts ready to really give thanks. For this reason I am leaving this song at the top of my blog...I need to keep my focus right. I think this might be a little preview of what Heaven will be like. Crank up the music, grab you kiddos, and dance your hearts out for Him in thanksgiving!

I'd like to encourage you to hop over to The Surrendered Scribe daily this month. Everyday in November there will be a different contributor on this blog sharing their thoughts, experiences, and reasons for being thankful. I will be featured with my words on thankfulness on November 11th.

Let's face it, there is so much going on in this world that takes our focus off of anything we should be thankful for and places our attention on the awful, negative, and uncomfortable things in our lives. How many times do we look at all of the wrong in our lives and thank God for it? Today's post on The Surrendered Scribe takes a look at this. I have a feeling there will be many more that will cause us to stop in our tracks and reevaluate our lives looking for what we can be thankful for amongst all of the turmoil, discontent, and yuck in our lives.

Here's to being thankful no matter what and to Julie for opening her blog up for such an encouraging project.

In January a new library opened just a few minutes from where we live. It is big, beautiful and we love to visit it often. Today I decided it would be fun to bring our school work to the library. The kids learned how to write Cinquain Poetry. Since we are in the midst of studying spiders, I had the kids make the subject of their Cinquain Poem spiders. I thought I'd share their poetry here.

Spiders

Creepy, Crawly

Runs, jumps, dangles

Ballooning through the bright blue sky

Black Widow

by Grace, 11

Spiders

Black, hairy

Jump, walk, ballooning

Lay their eggs in a sac

Creepy

by Della, 9

Spiders

Furry, crawls

Moves, eats, catches

Spins silk out of its spinneret

  Charlotte

by TJ, 6

Claira said her poem was about elephants. She did a very nice and neat job at making pretty little scribbles on her paper.

If you're wondering what the rules to writing Cinquain Poetry is, here they are:

• To begin, choose a person, place, or thing to write your cinquain about.
• Line 1: One word that tells what the poem is about
• Line 2: Two words that describe the subject
• Line 3: Three words that describe something the subject does
• Line 4: Four to six word describing the subject further
• Line 5: One or two words that rename what the poem is about (a synonym)

In case you're wondering why I made mention of our library at the beginning of this post, it's because I have a picture to share with you. Last week a new statue was revealed. It is a statue of Mary Draper Ingles. It just so happens that she was kept prisoner by indians just a few minutes from here at Big Bone Lick! Click here to read more about this brave woman. Here's a picture of my kiddos sitting in front of this beautiful statue.

We are having so much fun studying spiders! Today we made a spider web dessert. We simply put Chocolate Double Cookie Crunch ice cream (yum!) in a bowl and drizzled marshmallow topping over the ice cream to make our spider webs. It was messy which means it was a lot of fun and delicious!

I'd like to also take a few minutes to encourage you to hop over to Melissa's blog, In the Sparrow's Nest. She not only has a Charlotte Mason Blog Carnival going on, but also posted a great post titled A Divine Duty just under the carnival post. She reminds us of what really matters with homeschooling...and (reminder to self) it's not keeping up with the public school systems!

We are well on our way to discovering what is so great about spiders. After our first day of our spider unit study we are beginning to see these "things" as something other than just creepy. Imagine that! In fact, we are graphing how many of us do not like spiders now and will take another poll at the end of our unit study next week and regraph to see if any of us have changed our minds. At this point, 3 out of 4 don't like spiders. Although, I'm not convinced of TJ's answer since he runs from spiders just as fast as the rest of us. Ha!

Just for fun, we are reading The Black Widow Spider Mystery (a Box Car Children book) as a read-a-loud. It's a mystery to make it all the more exciting! While I read to the kids they ate spider web toast that I made for them. I simply toasted pieces of toast, smeared some peanut butter on them, then squirted chocolate syrup in squiggly lines and loops on top so it simulated a spider web on each piece of toast. Serve with a banana-chocolate-peanut butter smoothie and you've got a snack that the kids will love! 

As a quick little introduction to spiders we read Spiders Are Not Insects by Allen Fowler. We found this book to be really interesting with neat pictures despite its extreme simplicity.

Today we had so much fun schooling...without books again! It is so nice to take a break from those ol' books from time to time.

We began the morning by going to our homeschool co-op. Our little four family co-op that met at each other's houses for about five years has grown into a twenty-eight family co-op that meets at our church! And so the fun of being involved in a co-op continues to bless our family beyond belief. During our afternoon "show 'n tell" session that the kids and I do, allowing everyone to have a turn to show and tell about their lessons in co-op, I discovered that:

• Grace did a really fun mining project with chocolate chip cookies. The kids had to mine the chocolate chips and cause as little damage as possible to the cookies. The more damage and the longer their mining took, the less money they "made" on this mining job. This was a great one Tammy!! Grace also showed me her art work that she has been working on in her art class. Although she was disappointed in it, I reassured her that it is looking really pretty. I am looking forward to the finished product soon.
• Della showed me a ziplock bag that contained red hot candies, small marshmallows, a little bit of rice, and corn syrup. It was easy for me to guess that this was some sort of blood simulation. Another great hands-on science demonstration!
• TJ had a really nice sewing project to show off. He sewed the outline of a pumpkin on a white index card. I am impressed with how well he is doing with his sewing projects!
• Claira was thrilled that we played with playdough in her class. I am her teacher for two of the three classes and absolutely love these little people! We do things that we wouldn't normally do in our own homes like roll apples around on the floor just because it's fun and make a huge spider web by rolling a ball of yarn back and forth to each of the kids while sitting in a circle until we start to become entangled in the web ourselves.

After co-op Melissa brought her daughters over for a few hours. Gabriella is about the same age as Claira. These two are becoming more fun to watch play as they are starting to play more and more together. These two princesses decided to play with the dress-up clothes today...and dance around as well.

• The obvious, learning to count money.
• Learning how to wisely manage money.
• A great way to reinforce the understanding of ones and tens places when they have to figure out what bills to use to make $16.
• Basic counting skills.
• Addition and subtraction skills. Sometime multiplication is thrown in there as well.
• Not to mention taking turns, reading, comprehension, and helping each other are great lessons also learned.

The best part is that we all were having fun while learning playing!